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.

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.