Deep Cuts

(Hardback)

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Good songs come from love. Great songs come from heartbreak.Picked by Cosmopolitan as a best book of 2025.Picked by The Bookseller as their Book of the Month for March 2025

'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 towards 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.

READERS ARE SAYING

'The best debut novel I've ever read'

'I need this book to come out so I can talk to at least one person about it!! Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow meets Normal People, with all the nostalgia of Almost Famous and High Fidelity I really think its gonna be hard to read a better book this year!!!!

'You need to add this to your TBR. Just trust me on this, ok'

'I cant believe this book is a debut novel because of how good it is. I felt a mixture of Sally Rooney with Gabrielle Zevin and it was delicious'

'I love it with all my heart, I'm super sad it's over and I will be insufferable when it's out'

'I wish I could have written this book. Im jealous of people who havent yet read this book'

'This is an absolutely breathtaking debut. I cannot hammer that home enough'

'I cant believe this is a debut! Its perfect for fans of One Day and Daisy Jones & The Six This one hit me hard'

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

'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

Warm, nostalgic, totally engrossing. I loved this novel Liz Moore, author of The God of the Woods

'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

Id never really identified with the phrase screaming, crying, throwing up before I read, and fell head over heels in love with this incredible novel, which is perfectly billed as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow meets Daisy Jones and the Six and One Day. But now I get it This is rich, immersive and transportive storytelling and the result is breathtaking. Can you tell Im obsessed I really think this is going to be huge The Bookseller, Book of the Month, March 2025

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.