Open, Heaven is essentially Sean Hewitt splitting open the chest of queer youth and showing us the struggle of being young, lost and in love.

James is sixteen and lives in a small, nowhere place that isn't very exciting. He helps out on a milk route for pocket change to cover his school dinners and is friends with girls because the boys treat him differently (because of his nature of being or his sexuality or a combination of the two - people are cruel) until he isn't. Shy, isolated, feeling alone, James stumbles upon a friendship in Luke who is spending a year on the farm with his aunt and uncle because his mother has moved away to be with a man and his father is in jail.

To James, Luke is everything.

Open, Heaven is an introspective look at deep yearning and the idea of love, sex and sexuality in the confusing time that is adolescence. James seems almost ashamed of everything he feels and does regarding his sexuality and it's sad.

The book itself is written beautifully but it does leave you wanting for more. There aren't a lot of answers to a lot of questions that inevitably arrive through reading but at the same time - that's just how life is. There aren't always answers. This is a glimpse, a single year, and not everything ends wrapped neatly in a bow. This certainly doesn't. As a reader, I obviously wanted more but I'm also okay that I didn't get it because that's just how things are sometimes.

Overall, Open, Heaven is beautiful and encapsulates yearning and desire and shame in such a poetic way.

I requested and received an eARC of Open Heaven by Seán Hewitt via NetGalley. James is a sheltered and shy sixteen-year-old, growing up in the North of England. When he comes out, he begin to feel the distance widening between him and his family. He feels stifled by the rural community he has grown up in and dreams of a life where he feels he belongs. James is introduced to Luke through a job his father procured for him as a salve for his loneliness. Luke is older with a reputation for trouble, but James finds himself drawn to the boy's beauty and charisma. Beneath the surface, Luke is carrying pain of his own after being abandoned by his family.

Hewitt perfectly captures what it means to be young and gay. The uncertainty that comes along with it, the feeling of being isolated within our desires. There’s this really terrific passage in which James muses about the way he transposes his feelings on to unsuspecting boys, spinning entire fantasies around their beings, that really resonated with me and my own experiences as a gay teenager. He also contemplates his willingness to conform to whatever shape their desire takes, hitting on this idea of how gay men (and queer folk) are made to negotiate their own happiness in a world set against them. Open Heaven was full of familiar sentiments expressed in lyrical language that made me want to sink into this book and enjoy every page.

The writing in Open Heaven is evocative and rich, Hewitt takes queer teenage angst and turns it into something exquisite and visceral. The beauty and the pain of first love seem to live within the pages of this novel, often leading my heart to ache for James. The relationships in this novel, between James and his little brother, James and his mother, James and Luke, are all so wonderfully done. I didn’t anticipate loving this book quite as much as I did, but man did it cause some cracks in my heart. I think most gay men have experienced some version of James’ summer in Open Heaven and having that experience dissected and understood in such a tender and thoughtful manner was very moving.

A gorgeous debut! The complexity of queerness and attraction is a hard experience to articulate, but Sean Hewitt does an exceptional job with lyrical beauty-- no surprise given his backlist of fantastic poetry. If you enjoy novels with the lyricism and textual complexity of Ocean Vuong, Garth Greenwell, or Madeline Miller, please consider opening up a copy of Open, Heaven.

Thank you to Sean Hewitt, NetGalley, and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the eARC.

Seán Hewitt’s Open, Heaven is a luminous debut novel that captures the rawness of teenage loneliness and desire. Hewitt, already celebrated for his memoir All Down Darkness Wide, brings a poet’s precision to his fiction, crafting a narrative steeped in emotional depth and atmospheric beauty.

Set in a vividly rendered North English village, the story follows a lonely teenage boy navigating the complexities of unrequited love for a seemingly ordinary straight peer. Hewitt’s writing transforms this simple premise into a profound exploration of adolescent love, longing, and the ache for queer belonging. His ability to evoke the intensity of youthful first love, with its purity and heartbreak, is remarkable. Readers will feel the visceral weight of a moment when emotions were all-consuming and life’s possibilities seemed infinite yet fleeting.

Hewitt’s prose is tender and immersive, making everyday events resonate with universal significance. Fans of works like In Memoriam and At Swim, Two Boys will find a kindred spirit in this novel. At times, Open, Heaven feels like an extension of Hewitt’s memoir, adding authenticity and a deeply personal touch to its narrative.

This is a poignant meditation on love, loss, and the irretrievability of youth. An extraordinary debut that promises to resonate deeply with readers. Highly recommended.

seán hewitt is a mastermind when it comes to writing and getting under your skin (in the best way) with this debut. it's full of lyrical writing and the yearning you find in a queer coming of age story that rips at your heartstrings. this one's definitely a book to keep an eye out for.

Overall, a really melancholic novel that does an excellent job capturing the experience of first unrequited love. James' obsession with Luke would seem unrealistic if I didn't remember how stupid teenage love made me. Add to this the isolating experience of being the only openly gay person in your remote village in the early aughts, and you can really understand James' anxieties. Hewitt delivers a complete telling of the boys' relationship in a relatively short novel, featuring a little bit of framing 20 years on. I'm not sure how much the framing added to the story, beyond making it sadder to me.

The writing is lovely, if a bit flowery for me. It also felt a little ill-fitted for a teenage boy in 2002. I kept forgetting this wasn't taking place much earlier.

Wow. What an intense, deep, important, beautiful story crafted in such an eloquent way. Even when emotions were running high, I enjoyed every moment if this story. The writing especially pulled me in and held my hand as I journeyed through this story.

A tender exploration of love, grief, and identity—poetic and intimate. Fans of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous or Call Me by Your Name will soon fall for Seán Hewitt.

Open, Heaven by Sean Hewitt is an instant classic. Emotional and intense and does not disappoint. Will recommend to friends!

Open, Heaven isn’t exactly a “new story,” but it’s a beautifully crafted and deeply evocative version of a familiar one—the experience of being a queer teen, filled with longing and confusion. I think it’s especially relevant now, as a new generation grows up in a world where that kind of isolation and yearning is becoming less common. A kind of touch-stone of the gay experience pre-social media, marriage equality, etc. Set in the early 2000s, the book perfectly captures what it was like to explore your sexuality during a time when being gay meant being a social outcast, feeling fear and isolation, and hoping for something more—a safe space, mutual desire, a love that’s reciprocated on equal measures.

The characters felt real to me right from the start, and Hewitt’s writing is stunning. I found myself highlighting so many passages—they were just that beautiful. True poetry in novel form. If Call Me by Your Name was stripped of its problematic age gap and written with more care and insight, Open, Heaven would be its elegant, thoughtful counterpart, written through the lens of adult hindsight.

I was a little worried going in that it might read like a YA novel (I should’ve trusted Hewitt’s skill), but the narrator is an adult looking back on his past, and the writing reflects that maturity. It was done so well.

Seán Hewitt has officially become a must-buy author for me, after his stellar memoir, his exceptional poetry, and now with this striking debut. Thank you to Knopf & NetGalley for the Advanced copy. Trust me I’ve already pre-ordered the signed hardback!

What a gorgeous and tender story. I've never read any of Hewitt's poetry, but considering how wildly human and deeply relatable this novel, that's gonna change. I'm not one for coming-of-age stories, but Open, Heaven really has left an impact on me. There are echoes of ever classics of the queer coming-of-age space, but the gorgeous prose is what makes this stand out. I will be recommending a lot next year.

Although a bit of a slow burn, the writing was beautiful and I hated every time I had to put the book down. .I felt as if I was in James' shoes, yearning for his first love, and hurting with him when it went unrequited. I thought Hewitt did a good job at describing how it feels to be an outcast among your peers and even within your own family because of your sexuality. I wish that adult James' story would have had a different ending, but obviously that's a personal preference and it doesn't change my feelings on the book overall. Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the eARC.

Unexpected and brilliantly executed, Hewitt takes us on a journey of discovering what young love means, and the toll that unrequited love can take on our spirit. The prose is beautifully written, screaming Hewitt’s praises as a poet. I highly recommend this novel!

It's easy to see Hewitt's poetry come through in almost every line of this novel. "It was like walking through a folk song that afternoon - the blackbirds and the thrushes, the sweetness if the flowers, the boy who I loved, and who might even love me, waiting for me between the trees." He writes so beautifully of the English countryside, village life, the milk bottle run, the canal towpaths, the night skies, the trees and the birds.

Open, Heaven tells the story of James, a teenage boy growing up in a small, rural town. Now back in his hometown as an adult, James reflects on his coming-of-age, particularly focusing on the pivotal year when Luke arrived in town.

Told from the main character’s perspective, the reader is drawn into the isolation and otherness that comes with being a queer teenager in a small town. Hewitt's writing is undeniably beautiful. Open, Heaven is composed of long, intentional sentences that compel you to either luxuriate in Hewitt's vivid descriptions or endure, in what feels like real time, the hardships of being a teenage outcast.

Clearly this is the work of a distinguished (if young) writer. And yet I found it a little lacking. Yes, it’s an intense account of young or first love, so profoundly felt as to indelibly mark the narrator’s life forever more. And yes, it’s delivered in sensitive prose that makes very clear the isolated, doomed nature of his sexuality and alienation. But I didn’t feel it, and I didn’t find it enough to sustain the whole novel. Should it have been a short story or a novella? Should it have had a postscript exploring what came after the visit to the hometown and vast flashback laying out what happened with Like?
I don’t know. I just found the material plausible yet repetitive and thereby diminished.

Another novel by a poet? Don’t mind if I do. And this debut didn’t disappoint, further proving that poets are superheroes.

Pub date April 14, 2025

The friendship and love between two teenage boys in the English countryside.

At first I was a bit bored by the set up: a mid 30’s man returning home to his village in the north of England, reminiscing about his first love. If this alone does it for you, then great! But if you’re like me and your initial reaction is, “Meh”, then just hear me out. This story is a slow burn that is well worth the wait. I don’t mean that there is some huge plot twist, but that Hewitt was able to unearth the nuances of male friendship, of crushes, of longing, and of loneliness in a way that I have just not seen done on the page. I’m so glad I held out.

I got Shuggie Bain and My Brilliant Friend vibes with this one. Emotional, dreamy, and timeless. A great short read.

Thank you @netgalley and @knopf for this e-ARC.

I loved Hewitt's writing in this. I adored his style and the way he crafted the narrative. I thought the prose flowed nicely and the emotions were so impactful. I twas a wonderful read and truly showed his talents

This was a wonderful book which I devoured, even more so than Hewitt's previous book. What a gifted writer, there was poetry in every line and it was heartbreaking. Who cannot relate to this kind of coming of age yearning?

Lyrical novel about a boy coming into his sexuality in a small village, young love, and sometimes, making the worst possible choices with the best of intentions, and the fallout. Pick this up when it comes out some next year if you want some great pining, and young love that's reflected back on in your later years.