I went completely blind into this books; I simply loved the cover with the pink and off-white background, and the childish drawings... I was like 'why not.'

This book was 50% harrowing 50% comforting. The comfort part was coming from the writing. I could feel the poetic soul through the lines. I have never read such an introspective point of view of a day character: how he lived his coming out, how lonely it was, how he was fighting his feelings on the daily, and how those feelings/thoughts/impulses were so strong he kept unintentionally hurting his own family.

The little brother storyline hit close to home; it was nice to talk about epilepsy and what a nightmare it is to navigate through this condition no one can still understand to this day: it comes and it goes and neither patients or lived ones can control it, until you're lucky enough to take medication that works for you (they don't always do).

A pleasant, demure reading that I recommend to anyone wanting to read gripping litfic.

Thank you NG and the publisher for this e-ARC in exchange of my honest review.

DNF at 35%. all he talked about was how he was attracted to every single man on earth and that he delivered milk. i was 60 pages in and just couldn’t even anymore

I love the writing of Sean Hewitt so much—he has a unique capacity for nostalgia without the syrupy quality of overly saccharine prose. His writing is lovely and thoughtful, and the spaces that he writes into feel so real. I did find, however, that some of the buildup of this book was for naught; there was a climax, sure, but I don't feel like it was quite what the rest of the story was building towards. I had the opportunity to reflect on this book with a friend, and we both came away with the impression that it felt a bit like a wet firework. It still went off, but it didn't quite light up the sky or have the BANG that we were hoping for.

That said, Sean Hewitt has a talent for beautiful writing, and I hope he continues to bring us new stories. Thank you to Knopf for the opportunity to read and review!

Open, Heaven is a beautifully heartbreaking queer coming of age story. Seán Hewitt's prose feels so immersive and is (naturally) poetic through and through. I enjoyed that this didn't have the typical happy ending, and we're left with this empty feeling at the end, much like James feels as an adult, post-separation from a partner who could never live up to the love he has for Luke.
This entire story feels green, like running through a meadow, like bee stings, and nostalgia for a place i've never been.

Thank you NetGalley & Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the arc.

Sean Hewitt could writey grocery list and I would find it moving. The way he depicts relationships is absolutely gorgeous and heartbreaking. I loved this coming-of-age story and the tiny moments that balloon in significance at that age.

OPEN, HEAVEN is a beautifully written coming of age story. It captures that feeling of first love, when love is unevenly returned. The framework of looking back and returning home is effective. I loved the descriptions of place in this book. An exciting debut.

This was a beautifully written coming of age story told from the perspective of James, a gay teenager in a small village in the north of England. I think I needed to temper my expectations a bit because I thought this would be a romance but it’s really not. It’s about friendship and growing up in an unwelcoming environment as a young gay man.

There were a whole bunch of wonderful things within this book. But, to be perfectly honest, it left a bit to be desired in my opinion. I didn’t really understand the intensity of James and Luke’s friendship. We are told again and again about the power of this relationship but it reads as very tepid on the page.

I also thought the specter of Luke’s father was odd. I didn’t know what to make of that; it seemed to not fit with the rest of the story.

I was just left with a feeling of this being unfinished. James has let this one summer of friendship with Luke shape his entire life and yet we are supposed to believe he never tried to get in touch with him again???

I think this author is very talented. That shows through on the page. But I wish that I had enjoyed this a bit more.

i really liked a lot of the lush imagery and poetic prose of this novel. it was a deeply felt story that sometimes took me right back to those years of experiencing intense emotions as a queer teen - when you just want desperately to love someone and for them to love you back. some passages literally took my breath away because i was like wow, this is exactly what it’s like. there’s a deep interiority of the first person narrative that just sucks you in and makes you really feel the all encompassing and engrossing nature of jame’s obsession with luke. the story is sentimental and elegiac, full of intense retroactive reflection on jame’s and luke’s friendship.

that being said, i did also feel like there was a certain lack of depth in the characters and their relationship that i craved to be more present in the prose - maybe in lieu of some of the overly descriptive bits of setting, such as landscape and nature. (when i say you are there, you are THERE- Hewitt’s main focus is ensuring that you know exactly where you are with gorgeous imagery and sensory descriptions. it’s quite amazing to behold and I read some of the best sentences ever in this book… but it felt a bit overwrought).

for most of the novel, i didn’t really feel that james and luke’s relationship rang true for me. i was always left wanting more. the narrative lacked a lot of character development that would have yielded a more complex and rich portrayal of these boys and their bond. I felt that didn’t really know the characters that well by the novels conclusion. by the time i reached the end, i wasn’t really convinced of the lifelong duration of jame’s obsession with luke. parts of it felt genuine for sure, but the actual relationship itself left much to be desired in terms of specific characterization. unfortunately it was more of a disappointment than a stellar read for me.

but overall, i still found a lot of passages stunning - an atmospheric slow burn of longing, gay pining and agony.

This was such a stunning debut!! And it was so insanely bittersweet. This coming of age story that follows a sixteen-year-old boy was a real tear jerker. I honestly didn’t know what to expect going into this. I didn’t really read the blurb or anything and jokes on me, because my heart was ripped out.

I don’t want to give too much away but the prose in this was astoundingly poetic. I couldn’t put it down. It touches so deeply on loneliness, first love, and self doubt but also just so many emotions that aren’t necessarily spoken on unless you’ve dealt with the certain feelings spoken about in the book yourself and had to hide them within a small, judgmental community.

The fact that this novel spans over 20 years, and we see the MMC James experience everything from first love to bittersweet regrets later in life, makes this insanely raw and emotional. I’ll honestly be thinking about it for such a long time!!

Thank you to NetGalley & Knopf for the ARC.

This book is beautifully written. It is an elegy to first unrequited love. Read the book for the prose alone, however the plot seemed to fizzle and lead to no where.

Sean Hewitt's Open, Heaven follows James, a man reflecting on his teenage years in a sleepy English village. James is gay, and struggled as a teen to connect with his peers. He grapples with growing attractions to the boys in his class and people he encounters in his life. James eventually meets Luke, a teenager who's sent to live with relatives on a farm where James delivers milk. The two form a connection, and Luke's presence in James's life, while brief, has a significant impact.

This book was beautifully written, nostalgic and melancholic. Hewitt is a poet, and his particular style and love of language shines throughout this novel. I'd highly recommend this to fans of books like Call Me By Your Name.

Open, Heaven follows a now adult James as he reflects on the summer he spent with his first love, Luke, when they were teenagers. Hewitt is a poet, and that is clear in the writing here with beautiful, reflective prose. The characters are still accessible, and the prose does not overbear, but rather layers nicely with the teenage angst and anxiety. The chapters each tell a season, and the reader is front and center not only with the change of nature each season, but with James himself.

I found the teenage reflection incredibly accurate and relatable. Things move very slowly and are driven through fantasy and longing as James is young and inexperienced as the only out kid in his small village. James is incredibly relatable when he is young, though I’ll admit the few chapters from his strictly adult perspective less so. But the bulk of the book has amazingly captured that otherworldly, dreamy quality of the memory of teenage years. The story is very nostalgic, and I found the cast of characters well rounded and solid. I loved the passages about James’ relationship with his mom. I found myself wishing there had been more in regards to his familial relationships, especially with his little brother. The adult perspective on his friendship with Luke left me a little dissatisfied but I think that’s just my personal perspective. The interactions between the various characters all feel very real, and the small village provides an interesting backdrop that is somehow both cosy and smothering, exactly how small towns feel.

Overall this is a great book with an honest, authentic take on the pining and perils of youth and first love, and how small periods of time in our lives can make a big impact on us as a whole. It’s beautifully written and I’m looking forward to reading more from this author!

This was beautifully written. Full of emotion, growth, longing, and first love.

The novel itself is short, but carries a lot of weight. It’s character driven, and focuses on little moments with big feelings. This might end up as one of my top books for the year!

Thank you @netgalley and @aaknopf for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I was not a fan of this book. It felt like James had an obsession with Luke and I was not a fan of that. This was just not a hit for me. However, I did relate to him figuring out his sexuality and coming to terms to the new normal. That was the only thing that saved it from being 1 star for me.

<a href="https://www.libraryjournal.com/review/open-heaven-1816501">Didn't love</a>. Generally good at building mood with patient though flourished language, but just doesn't build depth of character necessary. This is one of the "seminal summer" books that is largely paints-by-numbers according to any metric beyond Hewitt's use of language.

In this debut novel by Sean Hewitt, Open, Heaven is an emotional and lyrical story, full of beautiful word choice and captivating imagery. This is a story about the transition from boyhood into first love, desire and yearning. And even when that desire and that passion is not reciprocated, that just creates an even greater emotionality and poignancy to the narrative.
One of the elements I loved the most is how the writing drowns you in words and imagery, creating a visual picture that is almost haunting in its depth. The story is emotional with James being lonely, full of questions about identity, love and belonging. And his fascination and fixation on Luke creates a bond for the pair that lasts the summer, giving them a connection that allows them to help each other cope in different ways. It is emotional and the writing is incredibly detailed and absorbing.
The only element that threw me was the final resolution. We get a lot about James’ family and while the story does well resolving the connection between James and Luke, it doesn’t tell us as much about how James responds to his family after his summer and leaves some parts of the narrative unresolved, especially James' relationship with his younger brother.
If you like stories with lgbtquia characters that are full of passion, first love and yearning, this novel about the transition between boy to man might interest you. I did enjoy the emotional and lyrical writing, the captivating imagery and the passion of the character. The most powerful part of the writing is James’ connection to Luke which is written profoundly well.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Open, Heaven follows James and Luke, two teen boys whose relationship that unfolds in the early 2000s unearths difficult truths that they must confront about themselves and about the way their worlds are changing around them.

It's abundantly clear from even the first pages of Open, Heaven, that Sean Hewitt is a poet. Though the novel is a relatively short read, these characters are so quickly, viscerally real, their experiences vivid and tangible, accomplished through a prose so thrifty only a skilled poet could accomplish such a feat. The journey of self-discovery that James, our narrating character, experiences over the course of this book is at turns breathtaking and heartbreaking; his relationships with not only Luke, but also his family and himself are fully realized in the text, to the point that I'd willingly argue these are real people, experiencing real sorrow.

I won't argue that Open, Heaven accomplishes anything startlingly different than its contemporary works -- I'm thinking specifically of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, or basically anything Garth Greenwell has written -- but I think Open, Heaven tackles its brand of story in a way that is just as well-executed and memorable as I could ever want. Truly an excellent read, and I'll be picking up more Sean Hewitt in the very near future.

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.