I had really hoped to enjoy this coming of age queer novel more than I did; for a novel that features so much nature writing, I found it oddly dull and colourless, and the plot and character work rather flat.

Our protagonist James is a 16 year old boy who has come out to his parents and at school. His coming out has led him to loneliness, unsure of where he fits in. Much of the time James is left to look after his little brother, who suffers from debilitating seizures. After taking up a job on a milk round, James meets Luke, an edgy young man with a father in jail and a mother who has remarried and left for France. Luke becomes his obsession, as does wondering whether his love and infatuation for Luke is reciprocal.

The story is set in a small English village off a motorway, and the best scenes for me were those in the hollow - they were fraught with sexual tension and teenage angst. The rest of the story meandered along at a slow pace and sent me into a bit of a reading slump unfortunately.

If your idea of heaven is lyrical, poetic nature writing and you’re not too fussed on plot, this may do more for you than it did for me. More Ocean Vuong than Douglas Stuart, which will appeal to many. 3/5 ⭐️

*Many thanks to Penguin Books Ireland for the arc and the e-arc via Netgalley. As always, this is an honest review.

“Set in a remote village in the north of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two teenage boys meet and transform each other's lives. James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced”

I really liked this book! It was a coming of age so I knew it would be up my street but was still so impressed. I really liked how beautifully written this book was and it felt so realistic about how it feels to have your first love. I feel like everyone can probably relate to at least one small part of this book. It highlighted how all consuming love can be and how it’s a bit confusing when you’re growing up!

I’d recommend this to those who love a coming of age book!

Love when a poet turns to literature; you can usually expect beautiful, lyrical writing and Open, Heaven was full of just that.

It’s a tender coming-of-age debut novel surrounding James, who reflects on each season in his sixteenth year as a socially awkward, confused teen. It is the year James comes out to his parents, which whilst acknowledged is not truly accepted, and meets an older boy, the enigmatic Luke, who is staying with his aunt and uncle in their remote village.
James is infatuated with Luke, verging on obsession. Despite these feelings being unrequited, his thoughts and actions become more consumed by him as the novel goes on.

It’s a vivid account of teenage yearning and captures those highly emotional years perfectly, with themes of loneliness and detachment from your peers. This really was a gorgeous read and I can see it being a big hit.

Written in such captivating prose, the novel captures exactly the awkwardness and innocence of a boy growing up in the countryside and recognising his differences from the people that surround him. The intensity and passion of his feelings are described without judgment, and the sadness of his reflections on his previous self are haunting and fraught with lost possibilities.

Sean Hewitt is a beautiful, delicate writer and his memoir All Down Darkness Wide is one of the finest I have read in years. His undoubted literary skill is very much on display here in his debut novel. However for me the plot was not quite as developed as the writing style. The story , of tentative first love is one that has been told before and needed a little more substance to make it truly memorable. Hewitt is a gifted writer and I look forward to seeing what he does next

Sean Hewitt's debut novel 'Open, Heaven' is a beautifully written coming of age story.
It is told in a dual timeline where James returns to the village of his upbringing and reminiscens about the time when he was 16 and got infatuated with a local boy. We accompany him over the next four seasons of his adolescence where his duties to his family and looking after his sick brother conflict with his desire to be close to Luke.
This is a beautifully and poetically written
teenage infatuation story of growing up in a rural setting and coming to terns with one's feelings and desires.
I would highly recommend this gentle, tender and character driven story.
Many thanks to NetGalley and UK Random House/Vintage for the ARC.

This is a beautifully written novel in the long tradition of lyrical Irish prose. It is a character driven novel, exploring a man's memories of a formative teenage year - complete with longing, unrequited first love and the teenage realisation that there is life going on outside of ourselves.

I struggled to like James, the narrator, and it was difficult to understand why he was so completely infatuated on the basis of literally nothing but... I guess we've all been there. I usually love a character driven book, but with this one I think it needed either a little more plot or another POV.

Open, Heaven is phenomenal.

James lives in a small village & has recently (reluctantly) come out, resulting him in withdrawing from relationships as a result; afraid his sexuality will be used against him. Until Luke. James becomes infatuated.

This was such a beautiful, painful coming of age story.
James' narration is raw, heartfelt and gripping, and even too much at times as we read through an age that we all know well. The emotion and yearning results in perfect angst and your heart aches for James.

The reader becomes swept up in James’ first love and gets to meet Luke (a brilliantly written character) through James’ eager, confused gaze. The first love, the confusion, the family relationships. It’s all beautiful.

I knew Hewitt was an incredible writer, but this solidified it.


Thank you to Netgalley and Random House UK/Vintage for the ARC!

Oh this was sublime.

James is a teenager living in a small village & has recently, reluctantly, come out. He has effectively withdrawn from all relationships & companionship as a result; he’s constantly afraid that his gayness will be used as a weapon against him. Then Luke arrives. He’s slightly older, a little bit bad & James is immediately infatuated.

My god the yearning. The pining! It would break your heart in two. Especially when we get commentary from James at 20 odd years older.

Absolutely gorgeous. And the way the seasons were woven in? Perfectly evocative. A book I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 stars
Publication date: 24th April 2025

Thank you to Vintage and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

On the cusp of adulthood, James dreams of another life far away from his small village. As he contends with the expectations of his family, his burgeoning desire threatens to unravel his shy exterior.
Then he meets Luke. Unkempt and handsome, charismatic and impulsive, he has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm. Luke comes with a reputation for danger, but underneath his bravado lie anxieties and hopes of his own.


This was such a beautiful, nostalgic and painful coming of age story, at a time in life when everything feels so “big” and so important, but also overwhelming and confusing. The writing is gorgeous, which is no surprise when you know that Hewitt is a poet (I don't like poetry and yet, I rarely have a miss with novels written by poets; they are always very special.)
It is almost exhausting being in James’ mind, at an age when you're feeling so much (too much? The angst!) and your heart is ever so fragile. I was swept by James' all consuming first love with Luke (who's an amazing character in his own right,) and really appreciated how his relationship with his mother was approached - it was much quieter, but no less impactful or painful.
This was very beautiful and very tender, and I'll happily read more from this author in the future.

Many thanks to the author, Sean Hewitt, @netgalley, and the publishers, Vintage, for a digital ARC of this book, which comes out in the UK on 24 April. I was really excited to read this as I read the author’s memoir, All Down Darkness Wide, in 2023 and thought the writing was superb. This, his debut novel, is a brilliant, claustrophobic study of a friendship and an infatuation.
The novel starts in 2022 where James, the narrator, is visiting a house for sale in the village where he grew up. James is alone and melancholy, which is unsurprising as his marriage has recently broken up. However, it quickly becomes apparent that James’ melancholy is less concerned with his marriage than with thoughts of the friendship he had with Luke as a teenager: he’s actually chosen to view the house because Luke lived there. The novel then spools back 20 years to tell the story of Luke and James’ relationship.

At the time, James was in his late teens, desperate to become an adult (“I was almost feral with it”), but still quite immature in his thoughts. After he’s outed at school, he retreats from his friends and is lonely, isolated, and desperate for some company. He’s also struggling with his desires for other boys, fantasising about all the boys at school at one point or another, but believing that love won’t happen for him – or, that if it does, it will be tainted.

When James meets Luke, he thinks that Luke will provide the key to a new door, and the possibility of a real relationship. The two boys become friends and James is always desiring, but unsure how to read Luke, and whether to make his desires known or not.
Relatively little happens in this novel – even in terms of the friendship, only a few meetings between the boys are shown. James says very little, particularly at the start of the novel, but he’s hypersensitive and overly analytical, so everything is parsed and dissected within his mind. It reminded me rather of Persuasion by Jane Austen in this regard, where a character is so caught up in their own head that they’re a shadow figure in the real world.

In terms of its yearning after a beautiful figure who always seems to be out of reach, the novel reminded me of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Folding Star. However, I’ve never read such a psychologically acute evocation of an infatuation before. The prologue and epilogue reveal the effect James’ view of Luke has had on his whole life, and I found the end of the book, which closes the story, but doesn’t resolve James’ feelings, to be deeply moving. This will be one of my books of the year and I would recommend it to everyone.

I was really keen to read this book. The first novel from Irish poet and non-fiction writer Sean Hewitt sounded just the sort of thing to impress me. And it did. I’m finding myself attracted recently to quiet novels which exude a rich sense of yearning and vulnerability and this certainly does this. Narrator James’ life is in a rut following his break-up with this husband. He sees an advert for the sale of a farmhouse, a place he knew growing up in Thornmere. He decides to view. His dissatisfaction with his present leads to a nostalgic trip through his past, particularly one year from Autumn 2002, when he was 15 and met Luke, a couple of years older, who came to stay at the farmhouse.

After a prologue set in the modern day and a bit towards the end the novel focuses on this year. Books with this feel tend generally to have an earlier time-frame (perhaps I’m just getting old). 2002 allows James to be a teen who has come out at school and to his parents in a small town yet very aware of his perceived position as an outsider. Luke is taciturn, sent to stay with relatives whilst his father is in prison. James becomes obsessed.

This is the tale of that obsession, of a love which cannot move on, of the interpretation of the smallest of gestures as something significant and it is beautifully written. There are elements which could have been beefed up, the location and the sense of the time both seem a little vague but James’ longings are such that the real world barely exists and this makes the lack of definition here very plausible and universal.

I was involved with James’ family background, busy parents with the limited time they have given to his brother, who is 10 years younger but it is James’ desire for Luke which fuels this tale in a way which is poetic and yet so relatable. It is hard to read this without making connections with one’s own teenage years. It will certainly be up there amongst my Books Of The Year.

Open, Heaven is published on April 24th 2025. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

This was my first experience reading Sean Hewitt and I suspect that I will read many more as this was so exquisitely written and supremely enjoyable.

James came out to his parents while still in school and finds himself in a lonely place until the arrival of Luke to a neighbouring farm. Luke is a bit of a wild character and James is in awe. As the next year unfolds they encounter each other in different circumstances.

Having read Open, Heaven I was not at all surprised to learn that the author has already published two poetry collections; the imagery and descriptions are delightfully vivid.

Superb!

This is a beautiful book to read. I advise you to read it slowly and savour the words of this debut novel by poet, Séan Hewitt.

James is a 16 year old boy who has recently come out to his family and friends. He felt isolated before he told people, and as the jibes wore off, he felt even more alone. His mother and father do not seem able to communicate with him, and the main focus is on much younger brother, Eddie, who has some form of unknown condition that causes fugue states and convulsions. James is expected to look after his brother all the time his hardworking parents cannot, and at times, despite loving Eddie, he resents this lack of freedom.

As money is extremely tight James' father gets him a job doing a milk round and it is on the farm that he meets Luke, a troubled young man staying at the farm while his father is in prison.

James becomes enamoured of this young man, and the book centres around one summer as James begins to understand what truly loving someone means for him. He struggles with his responsibilities to his own family with his need to find independence and acceptance.

The whole story is a beautifully told description of James' feelings about his life and his understanding of love and attraction, and I didn't want it to end. The language is evocative of school summers that seem to last forever at that age. James is such a sympathetic character and so clearly drawn by Hewitt's words that I wanted to take his hand and tell him it wouldn't always be this hard.

Beautiful. A stunning debut.

Thank you very much to Netgalley and Random House for the advance review copy. Most appreciated.

I suspect that my reaction to this novel will be unlike that of most of its other gay readers.

While lyrical to a fault, it is drenched in rather eerie sentimentality which I found cloying and twee.

Amazingly for a novel which deals extensively with the inner world, longings and imaginings of James , the out-gay 16 year old protagonist and his love for 17 year old Luke, there is so little character development that I felt I was watching two generic young men pasted into a computerised backdrop of villages, farms, woods, canals and above all, of flowers.

I felt unengaged throughout, despite the fact that I too began to explore my gay identity at 16 , albeit in the late 1960’s, and not the early years of the 21st century as here.

There are so many long passages of “fine” writing, so self-consciously wrought and so, so, skippable that , paradoxically,I felt clogged and mired, aching ,in the wrong way, for the inevitable “something” to happen.

The “something “ is, in adolescent gay terms , such a crass cliché that I was momentarily thrown by its mundanity,and the declaration, with which the relationship culminates, also is of a predictably quite stunningly…predictable.

Ultimately I felt some compassion tinged with a huge dose of astonishment that this adolescent encounter effectively ruined James’ ability to form and maintain adult relationships but I am aware that this is not uncommon,however alien it may be to my own experience.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my digital review copy.

Open, Heaven is a realistic yet melancholy account of a teenage boy in the early 2000s. James is gay and seems comfortable with his sexuality despite it being to his deteriment among his peers at school who have ostracized him from friendships. James befriends Luke the local farmer's nephew and falls hopelessly in love with him. The story is written with a sense of anticipation, a "will they, won't they", I could certainly relate to those heady days of being a teen and thinking I was in love, the story is written with absolute feeling, I could almost sense this was the author's actual story.

I enjoyed the book, the lyrical writing style at times seemed a bit like adding meat to the bones and it would have been nice to know how James' relationship with his parents and his younger brother developed and what led to him finding the courage to leave the village but I can appreciate that doesn't form part of the "first love" narrative.

Seán Hewitt is one of my favourite writers, and Open, Heaven quickly became one of my most anticipated reads for 2025.

This is absolutely Hewitt's take on queer romance because it will devastate you and uplift you in equal measure. The discomfort that the MC has in their own body really resonated in ways I didn't think possible, and I found myself sent straight back to my awkward youth. This book really hits home, and I can't recommend it enough.

Open, Heaven is a character-driven, coming of age novel set in a small English village, where teenager, James, begins to fall for his best friend, Luke. The story is told through lyrical prose, depicting the painful longing of unrequited love and the heartwarming joy of friendship, as well as the comfort and claustrophobia of life in a small place where everyone knows each other.

It’s a quiet and reflective book, exploring sexuality, friendship, love and yearning, all while tenderly showing the excitement and confusion of growing up. The writing is rich, beautiful and poetic, with phrases and sentences you can’t help but highlight, capturing the emotions of being a teenager and trying to discover who you are. I loved how we had adult James looking back on his experiences, nostalgic for being young and in love, even many years later.

A heartwarming and emotional book that will stay with you a while. Thank you to Vintage Books, Jonathan Cape Books and NetGalley for the chance to read this early.

Loved this. Massive fan of Sean's other work and this did not disappoint. Beautifully distilled, incredibly evocative, so much happening between the lines. You are right there with James and the relationship with Luke is stunningly, poignantly done. The heart aches!

I just love it when I take a chance on a debut author on NetGalley and end up finding a glorious story and budding great writing. Open, Heaven is one of those finds – it’s Irish poet Seán Hewitt’s debut novel – and I adored getting to know James and Luke, two teenage boys who meet in a small village and, over the course of one year, begin to learn the tumultuous nature of first love and desire. It gets off to an undeniably slow start, albeit the beautifully told landscape set-ups on the first couple of pages are magical, and then, like poetry, we tumble into James’s story.

I just love a good coming-of-age story once in a while, and this one demonstrates such simple but life-affirming growth from both James and Luke. I adored the shifting relationship between the main characters, and especially how their varied personalities melded and jumped off the page. But I also enjoyed the light commentary on familial relationships, brotherly bond, the delicacy of the late teenage, coming-of-age years. It’s intimate and brooding and obsessive in that unique teen-aged way, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.