I was really looking forward to Open, Heaven, and while the writing was undeniably lyrical and emotionally rich, it ultimately left me feeling a bit underwhelmed.

Open, Heaven follows sixteen-year-old James, a shy and sheltered teen coming to terms with his sexuality in a remote Northern England village, where his desires make him feel increasingly isolated from his family and community. Everything shifts when he meets Luke, a slightly older, rebellious kid with a troubled past and a magnetic presence. As their lives intertwine over the course of a year, the boys' connection, full of friendship, longing, and vulnerability, forces them both to confront who they are and what they truly want.

The novel spans a year in the life of a queer teenager in a small village, and while it captures the emotional turmoil and introspection of that experience with care and nuance, it often felt like not much actually happened in the novel. The focus is largely internal, with James navigating his identity and desires mostly in his own mind. There’s emotional depth, especially around themes of longing and isolation, but I kept waiting for the story to move or evolve in a more concrete way. A quiet, reflective read, but I found myself wanting more forward momentum.

I'm giving this book 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4 for this review).

Thank you NetGalley & Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for this eARC.

A stunning debut, Hewitt’s poetic background is clear throughout the book—the prose is so lovely I’m planning to buy a copy just so I can pour over so many of the lines.

‘Open, Heaven’ centers largely on James’ reflection of a key summer in his lonely youth, as he’s now realized these first experiences of love and true friendship left him changed in ways he perhaps hadn’t fully appreciated thus far in his adulthood. It’s nostalgic, somewhat melancholy, and intense, lush, beautiful. I don’t think I’ve read a novel that grasped so well the way adolescence teeters betwixt and between the precipice of adulthood as this one does. James is acutely aware of how he’s being pushed out of childhood—while his responsibilities as an elder sibling and love for his younger brother (who has poorly managed epilepsy) are a tether to family, coming out to his parents has made him into an outsider in his home and in the village, has isolated him from friends and classmates, leaving him othered and rejected (as someone who was a closeted adolescent during the intensely queerphobic 2000’s I found myself relating to much of this). At the same time, James is desperate for connection and an outlet for his sexuality, to be accepted and wanted in any way he can be. He soon finds Luke, also an outsider staying in the village, and they connect. James’ loneliness and intense imaginings keep him from seeking out Luke as often as he wants to, and Luke seems cautious as well (for what becomes clear are different reasons), but they form a friendship and a deep connection nonetheless. Open, Heaven is an exploration of intense platonic love, isolation and connection, and the confused desperation of early sexuality. The gorgeous wilds of the English countryside the boys explore outside the village echo James’ inner vibrancy, and the novel shines in these moments as well. I absolutely recommend it, especially if you want a novel you can sink into, and I can’t wait for more from Seán Hewitt.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgally for the e-ARC.

This book was undefinable. In some ways it was great. A love story. On the other hand, it existed solely in James’ mind. He “loved” Luke basically the first time that he met him. Also he neglected his ill brother and parents for someone who only loved him as a friend. And still obsessed with him 20 years later? Whoa, someone get the restraining order. I don’t think that this story actually told what the author wanted it to at all. I think he meant it as a life-defining love story when it did not come across like that at all to me. Very mixed feelings on this one.

When I read Seán Hewitt’s debut poetry collection, TONGUES OF FIRE, I felt compelled to start it over as soon as I finished, so I was excited to pick up his debut novel, OPEN, HEAVEN. This is a quiet novel. James is a lonely boy whose brother has a serious health condition. He came out recently, and his classmates don’t know how to treat him. When Luke, a handsome boy with a troubled past, comes to stay with James’s neighbors, their friendship leads James to examine the nature of love and loneliness.

This novel moves slowly. Every scene is drawn out with beautiful precision—you know how the sky looks, how the air smells. Hewitt’s poetic writing is on full display, and it works beautifully in prose just as it does in his poems, which often feature rich nature writing. The action of the story is also often propelled by James’s interior life. He is sensitive and easily disturbed, often imagining something sinister at the corner of his eye. Despite the slow build in this novel, tension abounds—will Luke end their friendship? Will James’s brother have another crisis? Is the sinister presence at the end of the lane Luke’s father, come to take him back home?

I was most moved by the novel’s conclusions about the nature of love, something I won’t spell out here to avoid spoiling the ending, but something that was poignant and moving. This character-driven novel won’t work for someone craving a fast-paced adventure, but if you want to slow down, reflect, and be fully immersed in Irish village life, take an afternoon with OPEN, HEAVEN, and be prepared to shed a few tears.

Stunning in story and prose, Sean Hewitt weaves an intimate tale of first love and heartbreak, and I could not have devoured it faster. It was raw and open in its depiction of James' love and desire, and the lengths he went to keep it. I'm glad I've enjoyed this, as I was a little hesitant to start it, seeing as I had previously DNFed a previous work by this author. But he knocked it out of the park this time and I'm definitely going to be picking up more fiction from this author if he publishes any.

Beautiful prose! I felt the pain, anguish, and hopelessness of teenage James acutely. The story is slow-paced but packed with beautiful imagery and deep feelings.

Thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC.

This was a “it’s a me thing” type situation.

I don’t like unhappy endings in love stories. And while this is MORE than just a love story, it still is one. And that ending was bittersweet and HURT.

And for me, it completely sours the whole story.

BUT the story is poignant and emotional and raw and realistic. It’s about struggling with sexuality and dealing with being awkward and being fearful of societal pushbacks and feeling reckless as you fall in love for the first time. Because we all know that first love can HURT…but it can also be remarkable.

{I was gifted a complimentary copy of this book. All reviews are my own.}

Open, Heaven is a promising debut novel from Sean Hewitt that tells the coming-of-age story of 16-year-old James, who is newly out in his small rural town and desperate to experience the next chapters of young adulthood. He spends a life-changing summer drawn to the mysterious Luke, slightly older and mysterious—and, most importantly, from out of town—and the narrative zeroes in painstakingly on the tumult of James' emotions, desires, and frustrations.

Hewitt's poetic sensibilities are the strongest part of the writing itself; the contrast between the wide-open pastoral setting and James' claustrophobic-at-times inner world was very effective, although I did occasionally feel overwhelmed by the descriptive minutia. And although Luke is the focal point of James' obsession, I felt his characterization was even more striking when it came to his relationship with the rest of his town—his parents and little brother, who suffers from seizures—and the way he finds himself pushing against the boundaries of his life overall. The depiction of the widening chasm of James' relationship with his mother was especially evocative, personally speaking.

Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an e-arc of this book.

This coming-of-age tale is beautiful. The storytelling was descriptive and mesmerizing. Hewitt made such a raw topic feel mysterious and magical with his fantastic writing. It was reminiscent to Call Me By Your Name, which I also loved so it was a winner for me!

OMG - what a GORGEOUS debut! The prologue is SO stunning that I'm tempted to quote the entire thing here in my review. Just know that the beauty of the language of this novel continues until the end. Here is a bit from the very beginning:

"Time runs faster backwards. The years - long, arduous and uncertain when taken one by one - unspool quickly, turning liquid, so one summer becomes a shimmering light that, almost as soon as it appears in the mind, is subsumed into a dark winter, a relapse of blackness that flashes to reveal a face, a fireside, a snow-encrusted garden. And then the garden sends its snow upwards, into the sky, gathers back its fallen leaves, and blooms again in reverse."

This is a novel of longing, first love, and the terror of being yourself. There is so much beautiful angst throughout. It did not turn out the way I thought it might, and all the better that it didn't.

"James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his autonomy, tenderness, sex. Then, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents—his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man—Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle at their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him, like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre, drawn to this boy who is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke’s bravado is a deep wound—a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life."

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

Sixteen-year-old James is alone. After coming out as gay, he finds he cannot find camaraderie with either the boys or the girls at his school. He is friendless and ashamed of the person he is. One day, he meets Luke, who has come to town to live with his uncle. Luke is everything James is not: seemingly self-assured, handsome, daring. The two are drawn to one another, and develop a friendship that changes the course of James’s life.

This is Hewitt’s debut novel, and it is a fantastic one. He is primarily a poet, which is made obvious through his gorgeous use of language. There are so many lines here that reached out and grabbed me by the heart, lines that made me feel the loneliness of youth as sharply as though I were there again. Though not much happens in this book, it is a page-turner; I could not wait to see how Hewitt turned a phrase or stretched a metaphor in new and emotional ways.

Overall, a beautiful book that contains some of the best writing I’ve encountered this year. Four (and could be persuaded to add an extra half) stars.

Open, Heaven has a mesmerizing quality to its prose and plot. A short, poetic flash of light that mimics the feel of being a lonely teenager.

This book is very dialogue-sparse, and the plot, though compelling, feels a bit incomplete.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, and Vintage.

A beautifully written debut novel of young gay love. James’ passion for Luke changes him and impacts his life deeply many years later.

While the prose is lovely, the pacing was a bit slow.

In 2002, James is a 16-year-old boy living in a small village in northern England. He has few friends, due to his shyness and awkwardness around both boys and girls–especially since he came out a year before. His desperate parents introduce him to Luke, the 17-year-old nephew of friends, staying with his estranged aunt and uncle. Luke is all the things James wishes to be: strong, mysterious, and effortlessly cool. He’s sequestered on the farm, but James yearns for the brief glimpses of Luke he gets while earning his own lunch money on the village milk run.

Over the course of several months, James works up the courage to speak with Luke, and even invite him for a party the village youth attend. Luke’s big on drinking, and his novelty gains James some social cred he doesn’t even want. Because James wants Luke, though Luke only loves him as a friend–something that they both need.

I’ll be honest, the book is beautifully written, it just doesn’t have much of a plot, and James’ pining was tiresome. I was able to picture the village, and understand James’ struggle to find community in a place that feels so unwelcoming. His family life is drab, with fighting parents that work too much and a younger brother who has some vaguely described epilepsy, for whom James must accept parental duties when his parents are out. It’s pretty sad, so I could get behind his desire for time with Luke, even if it was all so sporadic and unsatisfying in the end.

James tells us the story of his first unrequited love after twenty years have passed and his marriage has failed. I have no idea why the story is told in retrospect, instead of as if it’s unfolding at that particular time. This choice of perspective really undercut the urgency of the experiences, as the reader is well aware that nothing is going to happen to keep James and Luke connected. It also adds a deep sense of melancholy to the story, as James confides that he’s recently divorced his husband before we descend into his memories. Honestly, I had trouble knowing when we moved back to the “present,” though it is infrequent, and struggled to find James a likable character by the end. If nothing else, the author nailed the self-centered introvert personality of James, who has far less interest in his own brother’s health compared to the object of his obsessive attraction leaving town.

It’s not happy, it’s not a love story. It’s absolute pining for the unattainable, and it left me emotionally exhausted, sad, and wishing for more.

The writing was excellent in this novel, but I found the characters to be a bit one-dimensional and the pacing was a little all over the place.

James spends much of his time adrift in daydreams, slipping through the cracks of an isolated town that feels too tight around the collar, a home that hums with unspoken difficulty, and a version of himself that’s tolerated but never truly seen. His wandering thoughts are not just about sex, though he is a boy full of restless teenage longing, but about something softer, and more complicated to name. The ache for closeness— to be touched, held, understood, not in grand gestures, but in the gentle silences where loneliness settles in.

Everything in James’s world feels on the verge; of changing, of collapsing, of becoming something else, but the direction is never quite clear. That is, until Luke arrives.

A so-called ‘troubled youth’, Luke comes to work on James’s uncle’s farm after his mother vanishes and his father disappears into silence. Over the shifting seasons, a friendship forms— tentative at first, then close enough to blur the lines James never knew how to draw. That intimacy, the one James has longed for in the half-light of dreams, suddenly feels real, almost within in grasp, if only he could read what lives behind Luke’s eyes.

In his debut novel, written with the quiet, almost suffocating beauty of a poem so many of us once knew how to recite, Seán Hewitt captures the rawness of adolescent desire, the haunting weight of memory, and the ache of an unrequited love that exists in the space between friendship and something more. The loneliness in these pages hums low and constant, stretching across fields, folded into seasons, and lingering somewhere between what you once wanted and what you never quite had.

I wouldn’t be a teenager again for all the money in the world.

The writing was beautiful but I struggled to connect with the characters and overall really felt like I've heard this story before and had connected more closely with other versions of it.

This is a gorgeous book about isolation and connection as we follow a person learning about himself and the world - the good and bad. It reads in a way that feels like poetry. I loved it. Do yourself a favor and get this one. Beautiful.

This book was a beautifully written story of a young man trying to evolve into the person he'd like to be and the challenges presented by his environment, sexuality, and hesitancy to speak for what he desires.

This joins the ranks of books like Shuggie Bain, A Little Life, and The Prettiest Star. Beautiful coming of age stories that absolutely gut you. I'll be thinking about the beautiful writing and the central characters for a very long time.