Deep Cuts is such a vibrant read which was an immersive read covering music, mixed media, and the beautifully messy soul of the early 2000s. Joe and Percy’s growth, their obsession, and the way creativity simultaneously fuels and fractures their connection resonated with me as a creative person. I’d recommend this to anyone who loves music and has ever shared passions with friends, sometimes to their own detriment.

I was drawn to Deep Cuts by its glowing reviews and its early-2000s setting, a nostalgic backdrop for a turbulent relationship that shifts between friendship and romance, full of the push-and-pull dynamic, heartbreak, longing, and conflict reminiscent of Normal People. Unfortunately, the novel did not meet these expectations.

In a word, it was boring. The prose is absolutely saturated with musical references, which, rather than immersing the reader in a specific time or emotional landscape, instead obscure the author’s point and create distance from the story. At times, it reads like an intellectual exercise in musicology - one that requires a degree to fully enjoy.

Then there’s Percy. I hated her. The central relationship between her and Joe, rather than feeling passionate, devastating, or intoxicatingly frustrating, comes across as immature and borderline toxic. If ever two people should have left each other well alone and moved on, it’s these two. Percy is also deeply unlikeable - narcissistic and selfish but not in the deliciously awful way that makes for compelling reading (shoutout to Eliza Clark and Ottessa Moshfegh’s female characters). Instead, I felt trapped inside her head, and found it difficult to care about her fate at all.

That said, this is undoubtedly a well-written debut, and its niche style will resonate with the right readers. The novel offers a realistic portrayal of the complexities of relationships - both with others and oneself - and how they evolve over time. While it wasn’t for me, I have no doubt this book will find its audience. I remain curious to see what this author writes next.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

A love song, ballad all wrapped up in a book. Amazing novel and such a great love story. Definitely a must read in 2025 if you’re a fan of romance

These people are terrible and deserve each other. Despite this, this is a great book and I would recommend it to fans of Daisy Jones

As a musician and music lover in general, this was a dream to read! I loved the dynamic between Percy and Joe and how their love for music was the thing that kept coming between them. Listening along to the novel’s playlist while reading each chapter made the book feel really nostalgic and helped to immerse the reader into these characters lives. I know I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time, and I can’t wait to read more of Holly’s work in the future.

Thank you NetGalley for the early copy!

If you love your music then I think you will enjoy this book. Its a love story filled with music references in every other line - Percy and Joe meet in a bar and realise they have a shared love of music, the story is full of heartbreak between the two of them. There is a Spotify playlist that goes with this story and I think that would help understand the book even more. I enjoyed this book but I don't know enough of the bands/people that they were refencing in the book.

Really enjoyed this - it was very immersive and I enjoyed the relationships in it (not just the main one), although I didn’t root for the characters to be together, and I found the ending to be very very sudden - I audibly said ‘oh!’ when it ended. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC in exchange for a review!!

yes ? omg
I have so many things to say but I don't know where to start, and anyway idk how to explain with actual words.
But the "hurting oneself in order to be creative" alter my brain chemistry

thank you so much netgalley for the copies

If you’ve ever been a musician, loved a musician, or just loved liner notes, then this is the book for you. A will they/won’t they romance /friendship mash up with note-perfect dissections of rock and indie hits set against early 2000s San Francisco and New York. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow meets Daisy Jones and High Fidelity but better.

If I could give this book 10 stars I wouldn’t hesitate.
Comparing it to ‘tomorrow and tomorrow’, ‘One Day’ or ‘Daisy Jones’ is frankly reductive. And Percy, the star of the story, would be annoyed. This is a book about love and passion which isn’t always smooth or compatible. It’s about obsession, jealously and above all music. Funny, intense and profound, it will make me listen to music differently. I loved it, to me this was a perfect book.

Percy is not an easy narrator, she’s young, neurotic and obnoxious and I like her all the more for these flaws. I like that she’s ballsy and not kooky. Joe is young and insecure with too much talent. They love each other. They hate each other. They are the person you can never quite get over.

Epic love is heartbreaking and world building, but love and passion aren’t always about a person and I think that’s what Holly Brickley explores so beautifully. The love story is a threesome between Joe, Percy and music. The writing is acerbic and clever and wonderful. A commentary on the early noughties told through music, who doesn’t have a song that takes them back? We read books, we view art but we experience music with our whole bodies. I feel like I lived this story. It’s bold and brave, there’s a section of the book describing something so uncomfortable when it shows us how we are and not how we want to be portrayed and that’s exactly true.

I couldn’t put it down. I can’t wait for more. I hope there isn’t a sequel because it’s perfect as it is. Thank you for this. Thank you #harpercollins and #netgalley for my #arc

I’m sure there will be an audience for this book just as I’m sure I’m not it. I found it one dimensional and the central character of Percy irritating, self-absorbed and juvenile. I quite liked the musical references and the memories they conjured up but found the technical aspects of songwriting uninteresting. There’s more than an echo of David Nicholls One Day but without the defined story arc or any sense of direction it’s a pale imitation. Not my cup of tea.

Apologies, but I was unable to read this book. I only managed a few pages and realised it was just not the book for me.

This was an incredible read, I was so immersed in Percy's world and really loved her journey to discovering what she really wanted out of life.

A Music Lovers Dream! I loved every single second!

In Deep Cuts we follow Percy, a music lover from a small town, as she navigates her friendships and relationships throughout the early 2000’s.
Percy meets Joe, an extremely talented musician, and she soon realises Joe is destined to be a star. Joe notices Percy’s love for music and asks for her opinion on a song he is written and from this, a relationship centred around Joes music is born.

I can’t even begin to describe how much I enjoyed this book. As a music lover, I was hooked straight away and once I found the Spotify playlist to accompany the book too, I genuinely don’t think I have enjoyed a reading experience more.

Truly a music lovers dream!


I can’t wait to recommend and buy this for all of my fellow music fanatic friends and I will be thinking about this book for a long time

Thank you to Netgalley, Harper Colin’s and Holly Brockley for this arc

I really enjoyed this! I am big lover of music and really enjoyed the references to various bands etc in the book. I loved the complex relationship between Percy & Joe, and enjoyed that it was set over a long time period.

Zoe was my favourite character and I loved her relationship with Percy too!

I think anyone that enjoyed Daisy Jones & the Six would enjoy this. I also found the way that the story was told over time, with the main characters coming together at various points in their lives quite similar to the pacing of One Day.

What’s so stunning about Deep Cuts is how it explores that bittersweet truth: sometimes, to love someone fully, you have to let them go. The emotional depth and complexity of this story is impossible to ignore, and the writing? It’s as smooth as a pop song, but with the emotional pull of a ballad that’ll leave you breathless.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7191518452

I really enjoyed this. It's relatively slight but a very believable love story. The protagonist, Percy, is an interesting, fully rounded character with a tendency to analyse life through the medium of pop/rock songs. The only slight downside was its tendency to read like an academic essay in places, as Percy takes a particular song apart and explains it. That's not to say that these sections of the book aren't interesting and impressive - they are - and someone with more knowledge of music than me might really love them. It's just that to me they felt more like a thesis than a novel!

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in return for an honest review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

I was really hoping to love this as it seemed like the perfect literary read for music lovers... and I enjoyed it. I had seen SO many people compare it to daisy jones and the six and despite the ensemble of messy, endearing and painfully raw characters and their, of course, infatuation with music... it was naturally VERY different.

there was so much of this story that I adored: the push and pull between the two protagonists and their inevitable heartbreaks and coming back togethers, the messiness, the setting etc. but what I didn't adore as much: the MILLION pop culture musical references every other sentence. at times, many of them landed and allowed for an incredibly realistic atmosphere. but due to the quantity of them, it absolutely took me out of the story slightly.

I appreciated this for what it was and can see MANY people falling in love with it.

Just want to start by saying that I honestly think that listening to the playlist on Spotify would have made all the difference to my experience, unfortunately I don’t have Spotify and didn’t find out about the playlist until after I had finished the book.
This is the perfect love story for music lovers, I enjoyed it but I don’t think I was able to fully appreciate it. There are so many music references that underpin the entire experience, especially Percy’s writing, and it just wasn’t for me.
Apart from that I liked the play between the characters, their truth and their growth as people worked really well. I was rooting for them, and it was agonising at times as they kept losing their rhythm.

This is an absolute banger of a debut novel from Holly Brickley. It's a love story set to music. I absolutely loved it and have reccomended it to all of my book club friends.