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.

This book felt like reading poetry. I felt so captivated by the thoughts and feelings of the main character that I discovered and felt things as he did and it made for a lovely, heartbreaking journey.

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

4.5 rounded up to 5
I keep seeing Open, Heaven described as gorgeous, and this truly is a fantastic word to describe it! This is a coming of age story in the north of England that explores identity, the isolation felt by the main character—James—when he comes out, and feelings of love and (sometimes obsession) with another boy in the village. This also explores family responsibilities and I found some of the decisions James made were so stressful and the impact they had were heartbreaking.

I thoroughly enjoyed the writing and found myself highlighting passages to revisit afterwards.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Knopf for an ARC!

A beautifully written exploration of desire, identity, and self reflection. Readers who enjoy savory, poetic prose and character driven stories will not want to miss this one.

Something about this book felt deeply personal and relatable to me. I found myself highlighting quite after quote that echoed feelings and emotions I’ve felt throughout my life. I cannot wait to read more of Hewitt’s work after this.

“I didn’t know which love I wanted more: the love that consumed me, burned me, that fired my dreams and made me want to give myself up to it, or the love that held me, that had made for me this soft, beautiful cocoon.”

A coming of age story of a young gay man in a small village in Ireland. James is confused, lonely and lost, and meets another young man, Luke. The story is of the year they spend together, their tender growing friendship and James’s unrequited love. It’s a sweet novel, with evocative writing. But, I ultimately found myself a little bored as the plot was meandering and largely nothing happened. It captures the confusion and frustration of late adolescence well.

happy pub day to this gorgeous book <3

the yearning in this one… oh my god. the writing was stunning. I decided to read this while on vacation—which was definitely a mistake since I couldn’t think about or do anything else until I knew how it ended. I finished it right before we were all leaving to go out for the night, and all I wanted was a cathartic cry. It almost physically hurt to read the loneliness and isolation of James’ character. I wish this was a longer book, and I can’t wait to read seán hewitts other work.

Thank you to Seán Hewitt, Knopf, and NetGalley for this advance copy!

When I read All Down Darkness Wide last year, I added Sean Hewitt to my list of auto-buy authors. Every word is deliberate in every sentence - not a single word or letter is out of place. They all come together as a whole lot of spectacular storytelling that is full to the brim with feeling and longing. Open, Heaven was no different for me in terms of reading experience. It filled me with a sense of nostalgia that I can't quite place but that simultaneously feels amazing and painful. I loved it so much and I can't wait to buy a hard copy.

I'm so happy to be alive while authors like Sean Hewitt are writing and sharing their work.

Several of my book friends sang the praises of this book after receiving early copies. I was thrilled to also be able to read this early and am glad to say that my friends didn't let me down (they don't often!).

Open, Heaven is a beautiful coming-of-age novel. Teenaged James has recently come out to his family and classmates. No one in his small town is sure how to react or how to relate to him. James is unsure how to handle these new feelings and withdraws within himself as much as possible. That is, until Luke arrives at a neighboring farm, sent to stay with his relatives for the year. What follows is an aching portrait of James as he falls for Luke and tries to understand what the really means in his life.

James was such a vividly painted character. He was the kind of character that you feel like you can reach through the book and give a hug. Hewitt does an excellent job at portraying the mix of emotions that he feels, from the rush of love to the confusion of it all. James is sometimes a frustrating character, particularly in how selfish he comes off with his younger brother Eddie, but that just made him feel all the more real. Luke is perhaps less dimensional but there are some tender moments with him that really tug at your heartstrings.

The landscape around James is a character in itself. Hewitt is a poet and it shows in the way he writes about nature and the village. There are many lush descriptions of the setting that make you feel like you are right there with James, adding to the emotion of the whole story. I felt like I could see exactly where the story took place and each of the places that James and Luke explore together.

This was a beautiful book. I think it is in line with a lot of other queer coming of age stories that I've read over the last few years. But Hewitt's James' stands out in his portrayal. I will certainly not forget about this character soon.