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A review by luckyonesoph
Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
God. What a gorgeous novel. I inhaled it in one sitting, and immediately went back to re-read certain passages. I can't believe it's a debut, and I cannot wait to see what this author does next. (I also heard they're making it into a movie? With Saooirse Ronan? And Austin Butler? I need to be at an advanced screening like right now oh my god).
The best way I can describe Deep Cuts is as a perfect cross between the love of music and the harsh realities of musical ambition you get from Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, with the messy relationships and emotional resonance of Conversations with Friends (or maybe even Normal People) by Sally Rooney. I just know the booktok girlies are going to eat this up and I cannot wait for the edits.
Set against the backdrop of Berkeley’s campus in the early 2000s, Deep Cuts is more than just a love story between two people; it’s a love story between characters and their craft, their ambitions, and themselves. Percy Marks, a music-obsessed twentysomething, has strong opinions about every song and genre under the sun but none of the natural musical talent to back it up. Enter Joe Morrow (Joey), an aspiring musician with enough raw talent and charisma to pull in any audience, but who has not yet tapped into his full potential. The two meet one night at a bar, where Joey's admiration for Percy's musical insight leads him to ask her for help moulding his lyrics into something better. What follows is a decades-long on-and-off partnership filled with that undeniable will-they-won’t-they tension. Can they work together to create the elusive perfect track? Can their artistic partnership evolve into something more? The emphasis on the intimacy of creative partnership in particular made sure that Percy and Joey were not a cliche, and I was in awe of it.
What I liked most: The characters! Oh my god the characters! Percy and Joey (and Zoe, you'll meet her eventually and she's my favourite) are self-centred and vibrant and insufferable and intense and so, so relateable. I adored them. Speaking from experience, everyone is a little annoying and little pretentious when they're in college, and this book captures that "i can totally do what you're doing but better" feeling everyone feels, even for a little bit. That feeling that you're a little bit smarter than everyone around you, even whe imposter syndrome is closing in. Every character felt exactly like someone you'd see around at your campus bar or library, and I saw pieces of people I know even in the background characters. I also loved the writing. Like I said, I really can't believe this is a debut. There were so many lines that took my breath away, and the dialogue felt natural and honest. I loved the prose so much I did something I almost never do: I bought a physical copy to annotate and put on my shelf, even though it has deckled edges. I hate deckled edges.
What surprised me: The immersiveness (is that a word? idk) and depth that the lyrics, significant cultural shifts (eg. the pre-digital to digital music industry), and pop-culture references brought to the story, even though I recognized almost none of them. I was not old enough to be tuned into any form of media or news in the 2000s - let alone the indie music scene - and still, I saw how the timeline of current events and musical trends didn't just serve as a backdrop to the romance - they actively and inextricably shaped the way Percy, Joey, and Zoe interacted with the world and with one another. The scenes surrounding 9/11 were especially evocative; while I was not lucid enough to experience 9/11 in real time (i was like 2), the scenes mirrored my own experiences witnessing more recent watershed moments, like Manchester Arena bombing, the Pulse nightclub mass shooting, or the California wildfires. The book is sectioned out into chapters that are titled after songs, and so you can put together a soundtrack for the novel as you read. All of the songs were new to me, so seeking them out was a fun and unique way of tracking the passage of time throughout the novel. Look up the playlist if you can! There were probably some references or plays on words I didn't pick up on, and that's okay.
The only thing that kept this from being a perfect 5 stars was the pacing in the back-half of the novel: a few scenes (especially surrounding Percy's trendsetting job) could have been tightened or cut altogether without losing any of the character depth, in my opinion. Those scenes lost my attention, just a little. A few emotional threads - relationships between certain characters, etc - are left unexplored and without resolution, and probably could have been cut too.
All in all, this was a beautiful little book and I'm really looking forward to whatever Holly Brickley does next. Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced digital copy!
The best way I can describe Deep Cuts is as a perfect cross between the love of music and the harsh realities of musical ambition you get from Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, with the messy relationships and emotional resonance of Conversations with Friends (or maybe even Normal People) by Sally Rooney. I just know the booktok girlies are going to eat this up and I cannot wait for the edits.
Set against the backdrop of Berkeley’s campus in the early 2000s, Deep Cuts is more than just a love story between two people; it’s a love story between characters and their craft, their ambitions, and themselves. Percy Marks, a music-obsessed twentysomething, has strong opinions about every song and genre under the sun but none of the natural musical talent to back it up. Enter Joe Morrow (Joey), an aspiring musician with enough raw talent and charisma to pull in any audience, but who has not yet tapped into his full potential. The two meet one night at a bar, where Joey's admiration for Percy's musical insight leads him to ask her for help moulding his lyrics into something better. What follows is a decades-long on-and-off partnership filled with that undeniable will-they-won’t-they tension. Can they work together to create the elusive perfect track? Can their artistic partnership evolve into something more? The emphasis on the intimacy of creative partnership in particular made sure that Percy and Joey were not a cliche, and I was in awe of it.
What I liked most: The characters! Oh my god the characters! Percy and Joey (and Zoe, you'll meet her eventually and she's my favourite) are self-centred and vibrant and insufferable and intense and so, so relateable. I adored them. Speaking from experience, everyone is a little annoying and little pretentious when they're in college, and this book captures that "i can totally do what you're doing but better" feeling everyone feels, even for a little bit. That feeling that you're a little bit smarter than everyone around you, even whe imposter syndrome is closing in. Every character felt exactly like someone you'd see around at your campus bar or library, and I saw pieces of people I know even in the background characters. I also loved the writing. Like I said, I really can't believe this is a debut. There were so many lines that took my breath away, and the dialogue felt natural and honest. I loved the prose so much I did something I almost never do: I bought a physical copy to annotate and put on my shelf, even though it has deckled edges. I hate deckled edges.
What surprised me: The immersiveness (is that a word? idk) and depth that the lyrics, significant cultural shifts (eg. the pre-digital to digital music industry), and pop-culture references brought to the story, even though I recognized almost none of them. I was not old enough to be tuned into any form of media or news in the 2000s - let alone the indie music scene - and still, I saw how the timeline of current events and musical trends didn't just serve as a backdrop to the romance - they actively and inextricably shaped the way Percy, Joey, and Zoe interacted with the world and with one another. The scenes surrounding 9/11 were especially evocative; while I was not lucid enough to experience 9/11 in real time (i was like 2), the scenes mirrored my own experiences witnessing more recent watershed moments, like Manchester Arena bombing, the Pulse nightclub mass shooting, or the California wildfires. The book is sectioned out into chapters that are titled after songs, and so you can put together a soundtrack for the novel as you read. All of the songs were new to me, so seeking them out was a fun and unique way of tracking the passage of time throughout the novel. Look up the playlist if you can! There were probably some references or plays on words I didn't pick up on, and that's okay.
The only thing that kept this from being a perfect 5 stars was the pacing in the back-half of the novel: a few scenes (especially surrounding Percy's trendsetting job) could have been tightened or cut altogether without losing any of the character depth, in my opinion. Those scenes lost my attention, just a little. A few emotional threads - relationships between certain characters, etc - are left unexplored and without resolution, and probably could have been cut too.
All in all, this was a beautiful little book and I'm really looking forward to whatever Holly Brickley does next. Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced digital copy!