Deep Cuts

(Paperback)

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The biggest debut of 2025. A love story for the ages.


'Tender as a ballad and pleasurable as a pop song' COCO MELLORS

'Clever and heart wrenching and addictive' MIRANDA COWLEY HELLER

'An incredibly special book' BETH O'LEARY

'So relatable and enjoyable' GILLIAN MCALLISTER
The first time Joe plays Percy one of his songs in his college room in 2000, she instantly realises three things:

One, she is watching a star in the making.

Two, she can shape his music into something extraordinary.

Three, she will always be on the sidelines.

She swallows her jealousy and throws herself into collaboration, transforming Joes songs into indie hits with her blistering critiques.

But theres an undercurrent to the music theyre making something undeniably electric, hurtling toward love. And then, almost inevitably, towards heartbreak.

As Joe steps into the spotlight, can Percy bear to watch on in silence

And can he exist there without her

Deep Cuts is an irresistible novel about passion and obsession, love and longing and, above all, our need to be heard. It's perfect for readers who loved Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, One Day, Daisy Jones and the Six or High Fidelity.

Reviews

Tender as a ballad and pleasurable as a pop song, Deep Cuts is both a nostalgic romp into the indie sleaze era of the early aughts and a timeless love story of creative collaboration, competition and ambition Coco Mellors, author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein and Blue Sisters

'I absolutely loved Deep Cuts clever and heart wrenching and addictive, the kind of novel that grabs you in an instant and takes you reeling through its pages' Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace

'I find it hard to remember the last time I found a novel so relatable and enjoyable. Prepare to fall in love with Percy and Joe this spring' Gillian McAllister, author of Wrong Place, Wrong Time

'Deep Cuts is an incredibly special book, one of the best I've read in a very long time. Moving, beautiful, rich with emotion, it's an epic love story and the story of a woman finding her creative power, all rolled into one. Extraordinary' Beth O'Leary, author of The Flatshare

'Every writer knows the highest compliment is envy: I wish I'd written that. Holly Brickley's Deep Cuts is a joy: fizzy, moving, endlessly smart. Brickley doesn't just write well about music, she anatomizes why and how we love it, and she makes us feel the stakes of that love. So: I wish I'd written that. The other person I'm envious of is you, because you're about to read this deeply wonderful book for the first time' Claire Dederer, author of Monsters

'Clever, nostalgic, and deeply geeky. Deep Cuts is a literary indie-pop classic brilliantly constructed, with a raw, heartfelt energy that captures an era. I hadnt thought of PJ Harvey for years and then suddenly there she was there is such a range of music, I ended up listening to so many wonderful forgotten tracks while reading this' Florence Knapp, author of The Names

Author Bio

Holly Brickley was born and raised in Hope, British Columbia, a small town known primarily for being the filming location of the first Rambo movie. At 18 she moved to study English at UC Berkeley with an MFA in Fiction at Columbia University.

Instead of putting this education to any sort of literary use, she then spent a decade-plus running around San Francisco and New York, working in trend research and branding, and basically making a career of going out. She now lives with her husband and two daughters in a creaky old house in Portland, Oregon, where she prefers to stay inand write. Deep Cuts is her debut novel.