A promising debut! It was a nice story, and well written. Sometimes it felt like it was trying too hard at flowery prose, but as a poet turned fiction writer that’s to be expected. Overall, I really enjoyed it, and I think that this author could become something really special.

I found this book to be too dense and boring to truly engage with. It was a bit of a struggle to get myself to the end.

when i first saw i’d received the arc of calahan’s debut novel, i was ecstatic as i’d watched him in shadow and bone, which made me eager to check out his work. firstly, it is so clear in his writing that he comes from a poetry background; the lyrical way of describing things and beautiful passages were blowing me away subtly. as for the plot, i can only hope it was influenced by a a certain someone in his life, with whom the internet seemingly ships his with…but i digress. i highly recommend this beautiful story and im thoroughly impressed by his first novel- can’t wait to read more!

The novel is set in the fictional small town of Johnston, Wisconsin, where Cash, now aged 29, has lived all of his life. He is anchored to Johnston by a deep sense of *place*. In addition, he is tied there emotionally by his group of close friends who are like family to him, and by the memory of his own family: his beloved mother, who died in a car crash, and the father who disappeared from his life, and toward whom he feels both love and hate. The story is a small slice of Cash’s life that captures the dynamics of his friends and family as well as the changes he feels in himself when he meets Rose, a new woman who comes to Johnston with deep green eyes and a constellation of freckles on her cheeks that immediately grab Cash’s heart.

There are several overarching themes framing his story. Foremost is that of Cash trying to make sense of the bad and good in life, and “…holding fast to my faith in the bright future. No matter how wonderful or terrible the past, what is ahead will be special. It will be the way. This is the thing. This is hope.”

Another theme is the background “music” to the story that is the background music in the lives of the people of Johnston: the blues. Skogman writes:

“. . . a feeling so deep and so settled that you’d often forget it was there, but it is an essential element of your blood. It’s a recognition that things are fleeting and fragile and changing, and they’ll never stop being that way. . . . It’s an admission that God hasn’t made the walk easy or kind all the time, and life is a journey, full of harsh nights, cold mornings and scattered stretches of yellow sun. To have the blues is to know that it’s all more worth it that way, together, it is.”

Cash, once while tripping on acid, covered the entire walls of his basement with a mural of abstract cuts and swoops: “The wall looked like it was crying, like it was hemorrhaging blue. I had covered the entire wall of my basement in blue graffiti. . . . I could feel the blue slashes of pain, the torment, the chaos, all together with the serene, calm areas of relief. . . . It was my life. That’s the only way I could describe it. It was all of our lives.”

He often reflects on the lives of the people of Johnston, so intertwined with his own: “Quiet, simple talkers who get up early hours and do their jobs. They get their hands filthy and calloused and make just enough money. They take care of their homes, try their best, and get little rest. . . These are the people of God’s Earth that won’t detail your history books. They won’t make all that much noise.”

Instead, he muses, he and they leave their mark in “the graffiti of our town. . . . We are cracks in sidewalks, bent street signs, rusted gutters and train tracks. We are nails in wooden boards, handprints in cement. We are creaks in the doors of diners, stains from cigarettes. We are streaks of graffiti, blue as the sky.”

He also maintains that “Truth is, none of that big city, big money life had anything to do with the lives of the people here. They are universes apart.” This observation speaks to what is perhaps my favorite sketch in the book of what life is like in Johnston, when Cash talks about the ex-girlfriend of one of his friends:

“Shelby didn’t love him anymore but lacked the courage to cut the thing off swift and bloody. She was probably scared of being alone, just like all the rest of us, terrified of shoving chips into her mouth, solo on her carpet couch where the material was so old it rained cotton and almost swallowed you whole when you sat.”

In that passage I could *see* Shelby sitting in that room, staring into the harsh sun out the dirty window, despairing of her life, weighing the pros and cons of what was possible for her. So many passages in this book were like that: poetic reflections that make the mundane worth observing, and worthy of love.

Evaluation: I was immediately reminded of the book "Shotgun Lovesongs," with its small town Wisconsin setting, the focus on a small group of friends, and the prose that often sounds like poetry. Skogman’s reflections on the nature of family relationships and his evocative portraits of the realities of small town life in America is impressive in its *recognizability.* I lived in a small town during high school, and his descriptions of the diner, the sticky dim-lit bar (“Jimmy’s Place”) , the car repair shops, the familiar detritus on lawns, the dreams of escape by its denizens - it was all so familiar. Skogman did an excellent job in capturing all of it and elevating it to something special.

An absolutely beautiful debut! This was beyond poetic and lyrical and just simply stunning writing. Who knew Calahan was a poet?? The story was incredibly immersive and very descriptive and not at all what I was expecting but I found myself falling for the characters and the town and just wanting everyone to be ok!

It’s definitely more litfic than romance.. the romance is a very minor part of the plot but what there was I was invested in. I would say this is very character driven. No real plot. Just following the life of Cash so be ready for that. I could see it all play out so clearly in my head though and the only person who could ever play Cash is clearly Calahan so…. We need to make that happen asap k? K.

VERY excited to see what else he writes in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley and The Unnamed Press for the ARC!

i’ve been a fan of calahan skogman since he blessed our screens as mathias in six of crows! when i saw he realised his own book i was very excited due to enjoying his poetry. this book did not disappoint! his writing and his mind is truly admirable and i hope he writes more. phenomenal. truly brilliant.

What a heartbreakingly, beautiful novel!
Skogman‘s writing style is something I‘ve never read in a book before. So enchanting, poetic and captivating. It made me think a LOT about human life and how the biggest part of this earth‘s population consists of hard working people who just take on everyday life and live through it, no matter how hard it is. Everyone finds their way to cope with it…. and that‘s a a huge part of what you see in this book.
It reminded me how important community is and that all we really have in life is people.

Cash’s romance with Rose is exactly what I love to read. No big, overdramatic gestures but all feelings.


I can recommend this novel to anyone who loves to live a story through a character and roots for them to find their way through life and place in this world.

I honestly haven't finished the book just yet, but I feel as though I can give an accurate review from the 100 or so pages I have read.

The long and short of it is that I don't think this was the book for me. I think that there is a certain market for this book and people will love it, because the writing is great and the imagery is vivid and wonderful. Unfortunately, I think that for me, personally, the page-long text blocks without a lot of dialogue was a deal-breaker. This book is character driven, and very Outsider-y, but the characters aren't super compelling. I also think that if there is going to be a romance sub-plot, that needs to be more evident in the first 100 pages than a couple of mentions of Rose. I think the romance aspect of this is the love that Cash has for his small-town, and his friends.

If you're into the literary-fiction genre this is definitely the book for you, and I'm looking forward to whatever Calahan writes in the future because I think there is a depth to his work that I really can connect with, if he gives me more compelling characters, and more plot-driven novels in the future.

I loved it! I wasn't expecting much from it but the writing is so gorgeous. Absolutely heartbreaking, it reminded me of The outsiders.

Will post review on GR and edit eventually.

I fought hard to finish this book and not abandon it before 50%, but I’m glad I pushed through. I certainly would not have put this book in the romance category on NetGalley though, this is LitFic for sure.

The writing is beautiful and it is very obvious that the author comes from a background in poetry. There were many little bits I wanted to highlight and ponder and journal about. It does come off a bit pretentious at times though, especially in the setting of such a small rural town. That being said, I understand the point of highlighting that even in small towns where all there is to do is get drunk with your friends, beautiful minds exist and complex thoughts still arise.

The writing really immerses you in the town and with the people in his life, you see how deeply connected he is to all of them and how much of a role they’ve played in his upbringing. There is heavy nostalgia written into every word that makes you miss a place you’ve never been. You can feel the characters so vividly which I really loved.

The first half of this book was painful to push through. It felt so disconnected and choppy and had absolutely no flow or storytelling to it, I truly could not tell you where this plot was supposed to be going. I think some of that was intentional with the characters mental state, but it made it really hard to want to continue reading. I did appreciate the way things connected and came together in the second half of the book though.

The romance of this book is really not between Cash and Rose but more between Cash and his hometown. The actual romantic pairing fell flat for me and felt very idealistic and rushed.

Overall I think it’s a book that a specific group of people will really love. I can appreciate it, but I didn’t love it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Unnamed Press for sending me the arc!

i initially requested this arc because i seen Emily Henry giving it praise and usually when she likes or praises a book i end up loving it but this was a little hard for me to get into and in the end i don’t think it was the right book for me.

a lot more literary fiction than romance(we’ll get into it) in my opinion and usually i don’t mind when a book has little to no romance but when a book is marketed as having a subplot of romance i’m expecting the romance to be good, if not absolutely amazing. i’ll talk about the things i liked about the book first.

the writing. wonderful! extremely vivid and the imagery he conjures up is just breathtaking you genuinely feel like you belong in this small town and that you’re almost immersed in the life of Cash and his friends. Everything flowed well and it’s obvious that Calahan has a deep love for writing.

the male friendships!! this is one of the aspects of the book that sticks out to me so well is that the theme of friendship especially when it comes to male friendships is done with such gentleness and reading the love that these characters have for each other spanning years was just wholesome and definitely made the book for me.

ok things i didn’t like. the romance. i’m a huge romance reader it’s what i typically reach for but the romance actually has to be there and evident in the book otherwise it’s just literary fiction. Cash spends 40% of this book pining after Rose and basically falls in love at first sight (he seems like a hopeless romantic but reading between the lines he comes across as quite desperate to me) and then sleeps with some random girl only to come back to his home town and ask Rose out? Cash’s inner thoughts about love and romance actually made me turn against him because it felt like he was in love with the idea of someone and the IDEA of settling down that it didn’t matter who it was at the end of the day as long as he got his white picket fence happily ever after.

the hardest negative for me about this book was Cash himself. He just seemed to put people on this pedestal and held them at a higher level than he expected for himself. He would assume things about people just because he knew of them since he was young but has absolutely zero relationship with them. the biggest gripe i had was when Cash and his friends got annoyed that Saul wouldn’t sell his bar to them even though he never expressed he was willing to sell it in the first place, and it was almost like Saul was doing this just to annoy them (he wasn’t he just didn’t want to sell HIS OWN BAR). I feel like i’m reading about a man who is having a quarter life crisis and that’s okay if that was what the book was trying to convey but i’m not sure if was.

thank you to NetGalley and Unnamed Press for sending me the arc!

WOW! the writing in this book was incredible. so poetic and lyrical and picturesque. its been a while since I read a book that was so character-driven, and I really enjoyed it. the whole cast of characters was great and Cash and Rose were so perfect together. I've never been to Wisconsin, but now it feels like I have. Calahan Skogman really did well with this book!

A unique and interesting debut novel, skogman is a talented writer.
There were parts of this melancholy book that I really loved and that pulled me in deeper to characters, and then there were sections of the story that seemed a little discombobulated from the rest of the story. There were times when Cash’s inner dialogue would wax poetic in ways that would move me to tears, and times when the poetry of Cash’s thoughts didn’t seem to match his character at all. This left me as a reader conflicted with how I felt about the story, though overall, it was a very good book.

Callahan does an excellent job of introducing us to this small town and its inhabitants. The story is charming and captivating, with a narrative that is very poetic without being pretentious. Each page immerses us further into the daily lives and emotions of the characters, making it hard to put down. Definitely a work worth exploring

3.5 stars

“Everyone has a story in Johnston. Even those who came wandering through for a day or a week or to stay. We're all wrapped up and gauzed in the battles of life and have somehow found ourselves washed ashore here in the middle of nowhere.”

Blue Graffiti by Calahan Skogman transported me into a rural town in Wisconsin called Johnston. The cadence and flow of the story mimic the ebb and flow of life in this town. It can be bleak, cold, dark, and snowy in one chapter and then bright, humid, and scorching hot in another. The main character, Cash, grew up in this town and in each chapter we learn about how deep his roots lie in this broken pavement along the sidewalk of Johnston. We meet Cash’s closest friends, neighbors, bar buddies, some distant family members, and a love interest along the way. I really didn’t understand the romance aspect of this book and the relationship between Rose and Cash. They both had dysfunctional family drama growing up, but their relationship felt Insta-love and I just longed for a deeper connection that mirrored the novel.

This book is so different from the typical romance read and has a poetic style to it as well. We can find Cash retelling about his childhood and the trauma he endured in one chapter while hanging out in the bar with his buddies in another. It was definitely different from what I normally read so it took some time to get used to the way the chapters were written and the writing style as well. Also I kept picturing in my mind Charlie Thurston narrating Cash’s dialogue and I really hope he narrates this book. 🤞🏼

Overall this was an interesting start for a debut novel and I’m curious what is next for Skogman. Thank you to Unnamed Press and NetGalley for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

This isn’t going to be for everyone bc of the poetic writing style and how character focused it was but I thought it was a beautifully written love note to small town America. The dialog is what stands out the most to me regarding writing. Mirroring a John Steinbeck take on quick dialog was a cool asset to compliment the poetic prose. I wasn’t as compelled by the characters as I hoped I would be and in a character driven story, that’s a bit tough to sit through. You can tell Calahan comes from a poetry background so the prose is pretty but the character work is missing something for my own personal taste. Excited for Cal regardless of my liking of this book! I’d still want to pick up the next book he writes!

“Blue Graffiti” may be the most authentic story I have ever read. Callahan Skogman depicts real living through Cash and his small town life in Johnston. The story walks through many parts of Cash’s life - the lives of the Johnston townsfolk, navigating grief, relatable family and friend relationships, the ups and downs of working, and finding love. This novel does not fit into one box, yet it will have something that could resonate with any reader.

I am from the south, not quite the Midwest area of Johnston. But reading this story brought me right into the small town that my family is from. In our world, the spotlight is on the big players of the world. But life is really made up of the real people who play a part in our lives in those daily small moments. There is nothing more fascinating than a simple person living a simple life, understanding what drives them - their faith, their family. This story is an ode to those people.

“Blue Graffiti” was one of my most anticipated books of the year. I am so thankful to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this novel.

First of all thank you thank you thank you to Calahan, Unnamed Press and Netgalley for allowing me to read the book in advance. I've been wanting to read this book for so long and it's definitely one of my most anticipated releases of the year so, once again, thank you!
The writing in this book is phenomenal. The description of the small town, of the people, the place, the details of everything left me in awe. I could really see myself in that town, at Jimmy's chatting with Rose. The descriptive writing paints such vivid images in my mind. I cried in a specific part toward the end.
I have to highlight two parts:
This description of him "There’s some fight to my blue eyes now. The layers of ice shine off the bathroom lights."
and this description of love "I need a woman to play the piano on me.". I've never seen someone describe love like this. When you read the book, you'll understand the quote better in the context of the rest of his thoughts.
The only thing that didn't make it a 5 stars for me was the pacing. It takes a long time Cash and Rose's romance to grow legs and walk. I wish it would've been sooner. But I think the idea of the book was to really have the story of Cash (his past, his present, his struggles) and I totally get that and that was well done.
I just would love more of their romance.
But I totally recommend the book, for sure!!!

2* disappointing

Described by others as breathtaking, heartbreaking, raw or emotional - but I couldn't get into it. Cash seemed to spend his time getting drunk and suffering with a hangover. I thought the plot might become more interesting when he met Rose, unfortunately by then I just didn't care what happened. Have I missed reading the book of the year? I'll never know. DNF.

I can't recommend Blue Graffiti but it seems other readers think differently and have rated it highly.

eARC generously supplied by Unnamed Press and NetGalley, this review is my personal, unbiased opinion.

Oh, I so wanted to love this. The writing was incredibly atmospheric and nostalgic, but it just wasn’t for me. The plot was sluggish and I found it repetitive at times. While I really enjoyed Cash’s character, I struggled to connect on a deeper level and I think that’s because the writing just wasn’t for me. Beautiful atmosphere, just a struggle to connect!