All the way through I could hear Graham Norton's voice reading the book to me! Not a bad thing and I did enjoy it.
Connor lives in a small town in Ireland, the day before his friends wedding there is a fatal car crash,three friends die and Connor gets the blame.He feels he has to flee his home town. and finds a job in Liverpool.
After being seen with another man in a club by a work mate there is a fight and Connor is thrown out of his digs.He moves to London and stops all contact with his family back home.
Connor meets a man and they move to New York to settle down.
After a while they split up and one drunken night in a bar he unexpectedly meets someone from his home town..
The rest of the story has a few twists and surprise a happy ending.
A few parts of the story might shock my mum and some of the more conservative members of the book groups but overall another great book from Mr Norton.

The story of a group of young friends in a small town in Cork Ireland. Set in the late 80s, the friends who are in their late teens/early 20s are involved in a car crash. Three of them lose their lives and the apparent young driver of the car Connor has to leave Ireland for Liverpool to work on a building site as he is blamed for the huge tragedy that has befallen the small town.
He eventually moves to London where he becomes comfortable in his own skin for the first time, as an open gay man. Something he wouldn’t dream of making public back home in 80s Ireland.

As time goes by, Connor has no contact with his family, trying to forget the events of that tragic day and the way that everyone blamed him and brought shame on his family.
Fast forward and Connor has moved to New York. 25 years have passed and Connor has never returned home or contacted his family except for one brief postcard, but a chance meeting will bring back all those memories and force him to decide whether to face up to the aftermath of that day and return home to see his family.
We also have the characters in the towns story through the years. Connors family, the families of the deceased, the survivors.

I know Graham Norton as a tv presenter, an actor and a talk show host. I’m aware that he has published some novels in the last few years but this is the first one I have read and it was enjoyable overall. Not quite a slow burner but the more I read it the more I enjoyed it.

I did find the first few chapters nearly unreadable as the author tries to introduce a huge cast of characters in a very short space of time. I mean, maybe just a page to introduce someone and then onto someone else. It wasn’t a good start for me and I really didn’t enjoy the first few chapters at all.
However as the book went on it found its feet and rhythm and I was eventually all in.
It hops back and forward a lot from character to character and back and forth in time. It worked well for the most part, although I did find the odd time that you were reading a very important part of the book that needed some time to develop but was cut short and we moved onto someone else.

Minor criticisms aside, this is a very well written book and a very enjoyable read. Some really meaty characters to get you teeth into and some minor ones that are more of a distraction than adding anything really to the story.

It is essentially the story of a small town tragedy and the deceit and lies around it. A story about a young mans sexuality and finding himself. A story of that hidden acceptance we sometimes let creep up on us in life and how time can pass in the blink of an eye. As I said I was unsure about it at the start but by the end I had thoroughly enjoyed it. If you start this and done take to it in the beginning, stick with it and it will pay off.

Many thanks to Netgalley, Hodder & Stoughton and Graham Norton for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I've heard great things about Norton's arrival into literature, so I was very excited to receive this. A family drama with a tragic and poignant heart, this book was extremely powerful for me. For me, the pace was a litte slow at times but a great read nonetheless.

This story starts with a tragedy then goes on to explore the rebuilding of lives over a 30 year period with a warmth and humanity and an eye for small personal details. Set in a small town in the south of Ireland secrets are slowly uncovered as we find out what really happened to cause such a tragedy which changed so many lives.

Home stretch is a story about family and gay acceptance. The story starts in Ireland with a crash. Three survivors and three lives lost. It's for Connor the start of a new life in England. he can't stay in Ireland, people are judging him for the crash. In Liverpool Connor is free to be who he wants to be and is visiting a gay-bar. But there is also no tolerance. He decides to go to London and later on to New York with his friend. For twenty years there is no contact with his family, till the son of his sister stands in front of him.

In Ireland life continues. Connor's sister married Martin. They've got two children, but Ellen is not happy. She don't know why, until she discovers a secret what changes everything and shines another light on the happening in 1987.

It's a story about family, grief, secrets en gay acceptance. The story is about a period of 25 years with a time jump of 20 years between the start en the continuing story of Connor and Ellen. It's starts rather slow, but after some time it's getting more interesting. What really happened in 1987 will be told, but there are no surprises, it's rather predictable.

Home stretch is a nice novel about family and gay acceptance. About how people and community can change over years en about hope that life is getting better even when it had a bad start.

Not finished - this sadly was not for me. It felt very rushed and tangled, and I wasn't becoming invested in the characters.

Two of my personal alarm bells for books are:
1 author has won XYZ Prize and
2 author is a celebrity.
Well, Graham Norton has surprised me yet again. I really liked “Keeper” and I really liked this one.

A car crash in a small Irish village on the eve of a wedding. Three dead, three survivors.

How does a catastrophic event like that impact on the survivors, their families, their village? Can you ever recover from this?
We follow Connor Hayes, one of the survivors, through his life.

Norton is a great teller of yarns, not his flippant TV persona at all. Although the tone remains casual, almost detached throughout, the reader is invariably drawn in, compelled to root for the characters and eager to find out about the conclusion. Highly recommended.

In 1987, just after he leaves school, Connor is involved in a car accident in which three of the six young passengers die. Connor leaves Cork for Liverpool, losing contact with his family soon after he arrives, keen to leave his past behind him. In Liverpool, London and finally New York, he forges a new life where he feels he can truly be himself, but the fallout from the accident is still affecting Connor and other inhabitants of the small village of Mullinmore nearly thirty years on.


This was a little bit lackluster for me as it didn't have the dry humour that I really enjoyed in 'Holding' or the same sense of mystery that was in his previous two novels. I still enjoyed it, but unfortunately it didn't live up to the expectations I had for it.

Thank you, #NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have now read all the books Graham Norton has written and I can honestly say I love his writers voice. He develops characters so well- it’s like you’ve grown up with them. The storyline in this book follows a twisted path, the issues it deals with are current and relevant. It’s so good that people are able to read books about the struggles people have faced for equality - let’s hope the world continues to see love as a blessing for everyone to experience. Great book- really pulls you in. Can’t wait for Graham’s next one.

I've read Graham's first book 'Holding' which I absolutely loved, so was looking forward to reading this, his third novel. However, it has such a different feel about it, a lot of character detail and not much action I started to get a little bored about 100 pages in. The start of the book was promising - a village in Ireland in mourning after a fatal road accident, one of the survivors who was the driver of the car being felt an outcast so much so that he feels he has to leave Ireland completely. Unfortunately that's where the story lost its flow I found. I would have loved to have seen him stay in Ireland and seen all the characters interact more. Instead we follow him and other characters in London and New York, as he is also able to live his life more freely as a gay man, without the narrow mindedness and homophobic attitudes of his family and friends back home. I got a little confused with a couple of the characters at times because they were both nicknamed Irish - or at least I think so I'm that confused!

Graham writes well, but I just wish it was a bit more of an exciting story line. This is a review of 160 pages. Unable to finish.

I read and enjoyed Graham Norton's last book and was delighted to receive an ARC of his latest novel from the publisher and Netgalley.I wasn't disappointed in this book.Set in a small town in West Cork from the 1980s to the present day,it tells the story of Connor,who is involved in a car accident in which three of the passengers are killed and for which he is blamed.As a result he leaves Ireland and loses contact with his parents and sister.
The story follows Connor as he moves from Liverpool to London and New York,and comes to terms with his sexuality.It also follows his sister Ellen and her family,through an unhappy marriage to the doctor's son who was also involved in the accident that caused Connor to leave home, and an eventual change in circumstances for her.
It's very well written and deals beautifully with the feelings and emotions of ordinary people and life in both a small town in Ireland and in New York.Connor is particularly well drawn as a character and Ellen is also sympathetically portrayed.
These opinions are my own,and I would recommend this book highly.

I think Graham Norton is fast becoming one of the best Irish writers we have. This book has such depth while being incredibly readable. I loved the family drama and its depictions of Ireland. It also evokes deep emotion in the reader. A great book that I predict will be a big hit during the Christmas period.

Thank goodness for this book. I have had a run of books that have just not done it for me, I even questioned whether I had fallen out of love with reading, or worse, had I read all of the good books. Anyway - all is returned to normality, I could not put this down.

Norton's writing style is enjoyable, warm and a pleasure to read. The characters are interesting and believable and I wanted the best for them, even for the baddies. A perfect book for the summer.

This was a very readable, engaging family drama story. Characters are drawn quickly, so you begin to feel like you know people right from the start, and whilst there are quite a lot of characters through this story they all feel unique, and their roles within the drama are well drawn. The development of the plot, and what you think happens compared to what really happens works very well. I really like his depictions of Irish village life, and I wanted to know what would happen, hoping that everyone would be okay.
There are darker moments within the story, and it begins with the car accident of course, but this reflects real life, and balancing the emotional highs are lighter moments too.

With thanks to Net Galley for my copy.

Wow. What a book. Home Stretch is something very special. The beautifully told tale of one catastrophic event and the reverberations that last a lifetime for the protagonists. With no exception, there isn’t a character that you can be indifferent to. Delicately observed but moving at pace, I raced through the book and had to slow down to savour it towards the end.

Perhaps I could best describe Home Stretch as being a middle ground between two fabulous authors; David Nicholls and John Boyne. As good as Graham Norton’s precious novels are (and they are excellent), this feels like another level.

With thanks to Netgalley and Hodder and Stoughton for an ARC in consideration of an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book and will give it a huge thumbs up. With a great story line and excellent main characters - I would highly recommend this book.

This is a brilliant book I absolutely loved it. The characters are real and stayed with me long after I had finished reading. I felt their anger, the unfairness of their lives, and I cried more than once. The descriptions of Ireland in the 80s and New York 20 years later are spot on. I can’t wait for Graham Norton’s next book.

Reading another Graham Norton book is like coming home. It offers a warmth and hug while you read about Irish life – this time from 1987 onwards – and you often think of the people in your surroundings who remind you of his characters. We start on the day before a wedding – and a car accident. Six friends head to the beach… but only three survive. For one in particular who is left behind, life will never be the same and he, Connor, cannot stay in his community. He leaves for Liverpool, then London, then New York and while each has its own benefits, nothing is truly home. But as secrets from that dark day emerge, and his friends and loved ones begin to question decisions made since then, it’s clear that everyone involved on that day will need to confront their past. Although you can anticipate where some of the story will go, some revelations will leave you staggered. Expect ugly crying too, as certain sections are especially moving. Graham has done it again: another winner. Beautiful.

Wow! What a workout of emotions this book takes you through: love, hurt, shock, fear, frustration, hope and happiness! This book has it all!

Thank you to Netgalley, Hodder & Stoughton and Graham Norton for this advanced reader's copy in return for my honest review. Loved this , Graham's best yet.