I received an advance reading copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Pan Macmillan, Picador, and the author Garrett Carr.
This is a beautifully written story, very character driven and slow moving, but poignant nonetheless.
The pace meant that it wasn't gripping and it took me a while to get through, but could appreciate the detail and vivid depiction of the characters, their lives, and their surroundings. 3 stars.

This one’s a quiet, quirky little gem. Set in a small coastal town in Donegal, the story kicks off when a mysterious boy washes up on the shore—and instead of drama, we get this really tender, funny, and surprisingly deep look at small-town life, grief, and connection.

The writing is poetic without trying too hard, and the dry Irish humour had me smiling. Not much happens plot-wise, but that’s kind of the point. It’s more about the atmosphere, the people, and what’s going on under the surface.

If you like thoughtful reads with a touch of weird and a lot of heart, this one’s worth picking up.

A rich and rewarding read about human connection and the fragile bonds between us. A story full of hope.

"The Boy from the Sea" by Garrett Carr is a quietly powerful, emotionally resonant novel that explores the delicate bonds of family, identity, and belonging in a small Irish fishing village. Set in Killybegs, Donegal, the story begins in 1973 when a baby is discovered abandoned on the beach and is taken in by Ambrose and Christine Bonnar. They name him Brendan, and his arrival causes ripples in the lives of their biological son, Declan, and the wider community.

Carr’s prose is lyrical and intimate. It captures the rugged beauty of the Irish coast and the emotional undercurrents of a family navigating change, resentment, and love. The novel is narrated through a blend of third-person perspectives and a collective “we” voice from the townspeople, giving it a folkloric, almost mythic quality.

What makes this debut adult novel stand out is its emotional intelligence. Carr doesn’t rely on melodrama. Instead, he creates tension through sibling rivalry, generational conflict, and the quiet ache of unfulfilled expectations. Brendan’s mysterious origins and role as a symbol of hope (or disruption) for the town add a layer of mysticism. Yet, the novel's core lies in its deeply human characters and their flawed, tender relationships.

If you enjoyed the subtle power of Claire Keegan’s "Small Things Like These" or Colm Tóibín’s emotionally rich writing, "The Boy from the Sea" will likely resonate. It’s a novel that doesn’t shout but stays with you, like the sound of waves long after you’ve left the shore.

The book is narrated by an unnamed villager who charts the problems faced by the whole Bonnar family who are fishermen in a time when the industry is under increasing pressure. Brendan's behaviour becomes increasingly strange and no matter how hard they try, neither Christine nor Ambrose can get Declan to accept the boy.

The writing is beautiful and the whole story feels typically Irish - not just because of the setting, certainly the language is full of Irish idioms. I thought this would be a story mainly about the boy from the sea but it encompasses the whole family and the villagers.

A richly rewarding read. A sublime and sensitive novel which explores family and community in a unique setting.
More from this writer please !

I enjoyed this book - the setting, the people,... It was all described so beautifully you can imagine it all. In a closed community you can easily see how rumours spread and there are expectations as well as limitations to the lives of the characters..I'm not sure how I expected the story to end but not really how it did.

A beautifully written book I thoroughly enjoyed. An emotive moving look into human nature, family, connection & relationships.

“Most of us would have stared in shock, but Mossy had the kind of mind capable of instant acceptance. An undervalued ability.”

“Pressure to find a better answer led Declan to an insight: ‘No, it’s because we’re not know-it-alls,’ he said. ‘People have private lives and they’re entitled to them. We don’t claim to have someone fully worked out, like they’re tranparant to us, that would be arrogant. We don’t claim to know another person.’

‘But you don’t mind saying others know you?’ said Sandra. ‘We’re prepared to say others might have more understanding than us,’ said Declan,’but that’s not to lower ourselves, it’s just being generous.’”

From: The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr

Thank you @picador for the gifted copy.

I loved this story of a small town on Ireland’s west coast. A boy washes up on shore in a basket and is adopted by a family that already has a son. The relationship between the biological and adopted son is fraught from the start. The story is a coming-of-age of sorts of the boys, but also of the rest of their family and even the entire community and all the hardship, love, friendship and gossip that comes with it.

A fun twist, that luckily never turned out gimmicky at all, was that the story is told in first person plural, like a spokesman of the community took the time to sit down in a pub and tell you everything. This resulted in a really fun show of how public opinion is a finicky thing in these close-knit communities and can change after seemingly insignificant events.

This is good old fashioned, straightforward writing, without meaning that it is simple or easy. It’s a well crafted story and also quite funny at times. The dry comments of the narrator were spot on.

All in all, another Irish book I can wholeheartedly recommend!

Thanks to NetGalley,publishers and author for an ARC of The Boy From the Sea.

An intriguing book, this story follows a family, and a community, who have taken in a boy who has arrived in a barrel from the sea. I enjoyed the book, it was a good read with references to Ireland in the 80's-nostalgia thrown in for free!
Recommend

Absolutely loved this book! From page one I was hooked and couldn’t wait to pick the book back up.

I can’t wait for more from this author!

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Many thanks to the author, Garrett Carr, @netgalley, and Picadore for a digital ARC of this novel, which was published on 6 February. It’s the tale of a family of four in a Donegal fishing village, which follows them for a period of 20 years. Ambrose and Christine adopt their youngest son, Brendan, after he’s founded abandoned on a beach as a baby. Local gossip assumes that he was washed up from the sea, so he becomes known as “the boy from the sea” in their village, and as he grows up, he’s assumed to have special powers. His half-brother, Declan, is filled with resentment at Brendan’s arrival, and it never leaves him. Meanwhile, Ambrose and Christine have their own struggles.

This is an excellent read and it’s an exemplar of how to write the story of a nuclear family over decades. It’s so well-structured that each of the characters has a clear arc, each story is given sufficient time, and the novel also makes space for their dynamics as a family (particularly the difficulties that can arise in a sibling relationship).

The narrative voice deserves special mention. It’s told in the first person plural, which is subsequently revealed to be the voice of a group of drinkers in the local pub. However, they have the abilities of an omniscient narrator and so, for instance, they report a fight between Brendan and Declan as if they were actually present at the time. The voice is conservative, judgmental, and unintentionally hilarious. (The men drink in a section of the pub traditionally reserved for men only, and when they venture to the lounge, which hosts mixed groups of drinkers, they report it as if from “another world”.)

The novel is also pitch-perfect in its observation of Irish society and its mores. There’s a recurring joke about Declan’s cosmopolitan tastes in food (on olives: “You get them in Belfast"), and his attempts to introduce new fare to others are repeatedly rebuffed. And when he’s going through a patch of bad behaviour, you know he’s going wrong because – shock, horror – he actually goes down to the second layer of biscuits in a selection box to get the chocolate ones instead of taking a plain biscuit from the top layer - the men in the pub are scathing.

It’s a brilliant book and I hope it’s a huge success.

Thanks to NetGalley, Pan MacMillan, and Garrett Carr for the chance to read this e-arc in exchange for an honest review. The Boy From The Sea is about a baby found near the sea, during 1973 on the West Coast of Ireland. Christine and Ambrose agree to adopt Brendan and the consequences of their decision play out over a number of years, the ups and downs with their own son Declan. I found the book to be powerful and compelling throughout. It felt true to life in 1970’s Ireland and how people lived in that time. I would highly recommend this book and would enjoy reading other works from the author.

A beautiful, introspective novel where the importance of family and community is ever-evident.
When Ambrose Bonnar finds a baby boy seemingly washed up onto a local beach, their local village is stunned but reverent; a fishing community, they respect the sea, what it can both bring forth and take away, so they see baby Brendan (as the Bonnar's name him) as a gift, albeit one which is looked on carefully.
Brendan's influence on the local area is evident as he grows up; he seems to have a magical influence on the parishioners, yet his own brother Declan cannot view him in any way but suspicion - who is this boy who took 'his' place in the family?
As the years pass, family ties break, the community changes beyond recognition, and everything Ambrose and the locals one thought is put into question.
Reflecting on the dramatic change being experienced by parts of rural Ireland in the 1970s, Carr's novel is a study in moving forward when we are happy staying still.

Garret Carr’s debut novel, The Boy from The Sea landed on the literary shore, much like the book’s protagonist, Brendan Bonnar: unexpected, mysterious, packed full of heart and special. The book is a marvel, an intimate tale of a family and small rural community in a fishing village in the west coast of Ireland. The Boy From The Sea released in February and has quickly received much acclaim, reaching The Irish Times No.4 Bestseller, a Sunday Times Best Book of 2025 and an Observer Best Debut of 2025.

Brendan Bonnar is at the heart of the novel, and we follow him from a baby found on the shore, to an 18 year old adult. I found the relationships within the novel to be the most interesting, with Brendan, the Boy From The Sea at the centre of it all. Garrett Carr has written a fascinating exploration of Brendan’s relationships with those around him: his brother, parents, aunt, grandfather and wider community, but also Brendan’s relationship with himself. We can see that within these relationships, that here is an oscillation between holding Brendan up as special, a miracle and someone to be revered; or they put him down, shun, fear and view him with disdain and push him away. It appears for Brendan that he struggles to find that middle ground, to just be a son or a brother. The novel charts his journey into adulthood as he navigates these opposing constructs. This uniqueness and struggle to belong is apparent to his adoptive mother Christine, since he was found as a baby on the shore:

“She leaned close and looked at his face, it was strange to do so without the usual impulse to find connection, seeking traces of herself or her husband. There was none of that and it made this baby seem a complete individual, unique and a boy who’d need help to achieve belonging.”

I have written a psychological exploration of Brendan as part of my review which can be viewed at the link below. Please note, this contains spoilers for the book.

https://thepaperbackpsychologist.com/2025/03/31/the-boy-from-the-sea-garett-carr-a-psychological-portrait-of-brendan-bonnar/

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I found myself going back and forth about this novel - in parts I really liked the small-town vibe but the undercurrent of dread felt odd in places and, while I can totally believe that family dynamic, the almost supernatural elements took me out of the plot at some points. An interesting read but not one for everyone.

This was a well written book with a strong sense of place, capturing life in a rural Irish fishing community and the impact of adoption on a family over two decades. The themes of belonging, family and community were explored well, and the writing itself was solid.

That said, it just didn’t grip me. I was interested enough to see how the story played out, but I never felt fully invested, and I found it easy to put down. While I can appreciate the quality of the writing, it simply wasn’t a book that left much of an impression on me.

Actually a 3.5.

I really enjoyed the collective voice of this one, the idea of a small town where no one talks but everyone notices what goes on. The working class town and effects of neoliberal policies on such places i thought was dealt with well and wasn't too heavy handed. And the moment when the father takes his elder son out on a boat and due to pride ends up in a storm I actually had my heart in my mouth and could not go to sleep or turn the pages fast enough. However, I don't feel like it knew quite where it wanted to go, it meandered a little and didn't hit the politics hard enough for my liking. I also felt like the characters, particularly the mother na her sister, were somewhat underdeveloped. but I will definitely read what this author published next.

The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr is garnering significant praise, and it's easy to see why. "The Boy from the Sea" is a moving and beautifully written novel that offers a profound exploration of human relationships and the power of place.
Total rating 4.5 stars

I'm recommending this beautiful book to you today: A simple yet stunning story about a baby boy abandoned on a beach on Ireland's west coast and the family who adopt him.

We see the boy grow up through the eyes of the close-knit community, whose collective voice narrates the story. It's a perspective I loved. Not only is it unique, but it also helps us to fall even more in love with the wonderful characters who grace the pages.

And it's not just Brendan, the young boy, who stands out here. It's the entire Bonnar family, and even some of their friends and neighbours. The characters are wonderfully evoked and really help to emphasise the confines and crevices of Irish rural life, the complexities of family and relationships, and the ruggedness of Ireland's landscape.

This is a story told with honesty, wit, and heart. The writing is sharp and vivid, but there's also a softness to it; one usually reserved for old tales shared around a fireplace.

I loved this novel, and I'm really excited to read more of Garrett Carr's writing.

The book cover is stunning, but I also have to recommend the audiobook, which is beautifully narrated.