This was such a good book. I loved the story and the writing so much. The characters were great and the story flowed smoothly. Will definitely read more books by this author in the future.

To be completely honest, I almost DNF'ed this one. A slow-paced story about a young boy who accepts his queerness early, and his first time being in love with someone (who, he is pretty sure at least, doesn't love him back). It's a story about boyhood and unrequited love in a quiet town, about stolen moments and secret glances. It's about friendship, and queerness, and coming-of-age.
I think I had a hard time initially because I have a hard time relating to a young boy growing up in a small village in Ireland. However, I can definitely relate to being close to someone and so, whole-heartedly, secretly (or not-so) in love with them, drinking up every glance, every touch, every word they say, just to ultimately lose them. I found a kinship with the main character in that way.
I'm glad I stuck with it and finished the book. I'm glad James was able to get the closure my 17-year-old self so desperately needed, but never received.

Thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

This is a deeply moving novel that explores love and identity. The story centers on James, a gay teenager who falls in love with his neighbor, Luke. The writing is absolutely beautiful, and I found myself getting lost in the English country setting and poetic descriptions. However, the ending was a little abrupt and left me wanting more. Despite that, the book is not one to be missed and I think fans of Call Me by Your Name will love this novel!

3.5 stars

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ½
Genre: Literary Fiction + LGBTQ+

This is a coming-of-age story that takes place in a remote English village. The story follows a sixteen-year-old boy, James, who is trying to come to terms with his sexuality, shyness, and life obstacles. When Luke comes into the picture, James becomes totally smitten by him, despite having a different personality than him.

The story is very well written. The lyrical and poetic prose of the author shines throughout the book. The author is an acclaimed poet, so no wonder his prose is very rich even if this is his debut novel. The coming-of-age story is very raw and real. I feel every reader will find something in James that will remind them of their own experiences when they were that young.

Sean Hewitt excelled in creating the perfect setting that will make the main character feel isolated, both from inside and outside. The remote village with the changing seasons that the author implemented in the book enriches the reading experience.

There’s something about the book's tone that resonates with me. It’s quite melancholic and bittersweet, infused with a sense of longing and heartache. This atmosphere complements the story and the character’s journey. I loved it! It’s beautiful, full of emotional depth and tenderness.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC of this book.

Beautifully written book with beautiful characters. The “love” story between James and Luke is something I won’t soon forget. I always enjoy a forbidden love story that’s full of lust and yearning — and this one really stands out. The author who is a poet clearly has a gift, and I’ll be looking forward for his next novel to see what story he comes up with next!

Really beautiful debut novel from Hewitt; literary queer coming of age story is my bread and butter and the writing in this is haunting and beautiful. I personally wish it spanned a bit longer to explore a bit more of the adulthood side of it but I’d definitely recommend for genre enjoyers

This was a beautifully written coming of age story about a queer teen in rural Ireland in the early 2000s. Written as one long flash back to 2002, James struggles with his strong feelings for his only friend Luke. After being outed to his peers, James is ostracized at school and tries to quash his feelings towards the other boys at school. James meets Luke while delivering milk and is soon infatuated with his new friend.
James's internal struggles with his romantic feelings, his overwhelming loneliness, and his familial expectations were beautifully written. I really enjoyed this book and look forward to more from this author.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of Open, Heaven in exchange for my honest review.

3.25 stars



I enjoyed this book, but it didn't fully hit for me. The comp read to Douglas Stuart is what drew me, since Stuart's prose is visceral in a way that I've not encountered anywhere else before. And while Hewitt's prose is absolutely striking (ornate yet deliberate and purposeful), it lacked that viscerality that drew me to Stuart's.

Open, Heaven strikes an interesting balance. Situated within a frame narrative, we meet our narrator James in the present before following him to reflection on a pivotal year of his childhood. While I appreciate that the main character is very interior, I do think that was somewhat to the detriment of the work. I understand that the whole book is about the inability of this character to connect with other people, but it was missing a certain je ne sais quoi to really drive that point home. I also wish we had gotten a bit more to round out Luke as a character -- yes, we're only seeing James's perspective through the whole story, and yes, he has issues with connecting. But if Luke is the one person he CAN connect with, there should've been a bit more of that, imo.

I also struggled to fully understand how the ill little brother factored into things. It felt like a use of narrative prosthesis (check out Mitchell & Snyder's book of the same name), but not in a way that felt effective -- several days after finishing, I still don't really understand what was trying to be accomplished there. Was it to explain the rupture of the narrator's family? why he can't move on from this one summer, both due to first "love" and presumably his brother's death? Hopefully the final edit that is published tackles some of that.

Despite that, I did still enjoy most of my time with this book, even if literary fiction is hit or miss for me. If you're looking for young queer longing, this book will absolutely hit the spot for you. I definitely want to check out Hewitt's poetry, and I'm curious to read another novel from him in the future!

finished this in one sitting and i LOVE. the prose. the exploration of queer love. the utter talent this takes…i’m obsessed. hewitt has found a new reader in me as someone who doesn’t enjoy/know much about poetry either!

Open Heaven was a beautiful and moving story of awakening. James, the main character, was incredibly relatable, making it easy to connect with his journey on a deep level. His story was written with such emotion and authenticity that it truly made you feel every moment alongside him. There was joy, confusion, and chaos woven throughout the narrative, creating a raw and realistic portrayal of self-discovery and growth. The way the author captured these emotions was stunning, making the book both thought-provoking and deeply touching. I found myself completely immersed in James’s experiences, and I enjoyed reading this novel immensely.

Gosh, this is full of so much yearning and desire, which I think is missing these days. It felt so lush and dreamlike. Hewitt is a talented storyteller, the way he pulls you in and holds your attention is like no other. What an amazing coming of age story.

Poet Seán Hewitt debuts as a novelist with this slim, bittersweet ode to teenage sexual awakening and coming of age. James, recently divorced, attends an open house in the small country town of his childhood. Readers are then swept up in memories of his sixteenth year there, his experiences of coming out in a small rural community and how his life changes when a charismatic boy moves into the neighboring farm.

Open, Heaven is heartbreakingly beautiful, full of teenage yearning, anxiety, tenderness and love. Recommend to readers of Sarah Winman.

i read the entirety of seán hewitt's debut novel with a particular and persistent heartache—the kind that with every stabbing sensation weakens your throat and threatens tears. my experience with OPEN, HEAVEN is precisely why humans have been storytellers for eons: to immortalize our humanity, to remind one another that we aren't alone in how we feel, to prove that we existed at all. following two sixteen year old boys and the way they transform each other's lives over the course of the following year, OPEN, HEAVEN is a gentle and harrowing exploration of queerness, friendship, desire, family, and the way loving someone can wind through your life and change you forevermore, splitting your life into a christ-like before and after.

written with the spectacular beauty of a poet's touch and a devastatingly keen sense of how it feels to be in love with someone who may not love you the same way, OPEN, HEAVEN felt so drawn from my own specific teenage heart that i cannot bring myself to write about it here. for anyone who has ever loved and lost and persevered and reckoned with yourself in its aftermath—especially if you're queer—this book will open your heart and hold you until your tears are dry. as with his memoir, ALL DOWN DARKNESS WIDE, hewitt made me feel as if i could breathe for the first time, having seen what i thought (irrationally) that i was alone with put to page and bound and sent out into the world, so it might show any number of people that they are seen and loved and have never been alone.

OPEN, HEAVEN is—for me—the perfect novel. there will not be a day, for the rest of my life, where it will not be with me like a beautiful forget-me-not, whose effect perfectly mirrors its name, just as the novel itself.

Sean Hewitt’s “Open Heaven” is very special.
I’m passionate about it. It’s truly an astonishing story — one of the best coming of age (queer) books I’ve ever read….a smashing hit debut novel.
It’s desperately sad — yet ‘deep-in-your-bones’-alluring-captivating-emotional-thought-provoking-and gorgeously-poetically-written debut novels to come out in years. It deserves awards. It’s what classic books are made of. In my opinion, it’s a book that could be studied….(as to why it’s so fantastic for one thing).
ALL TYPE OF READERS - FROM EVERY GENRE- EVERY AGE - will be taken by this story!
I predict “Open Heaven” will become a great classic. It’s a coming-of-age phenomenon. It has all the enduring qualities that sustain relevance across generations throughout different eras. It’s ‘that’ extraordinary.
It’s not a book that should -by any means- slip through the cracks.
Also…
….It’s just one of those books I can’t stop thinking about.

The story is set in a remote village in North England. It takes place over one year where James Legh (age 16), up with his parents and younger brother, Eddie. (age 5).

With the Prologue set in 2022, we learn from James (a Librarian-in his 30’s), — who hasn’t been back to his hometown village (Thornmere) in twenty years — that he was afraid it would be to painful to visit old memories of home.
“I had thought it would be painful to be reminded, but what I felt instead was a sort of collapse in time, or a possibility: a curious but strong sense that my old life might still exist there, that if I went back, I might find those people, that summer, all going on their still, unharmed and unchanged”.
“When my marriage fell apart, my husband said that he had realized I could love him, but not desire him, and the moment he said those words, I knew they were true. It was like my whole self had been exposed as a fraud, and I broke down, because I did not know how I had got here, and I thought that I had wasted my life”.
“I kept coming back to Thornmere, to my family and, as usual, to Luke. It was twenty years since I had seen him, and nearly as long since I had been back to the village, but I had thought about him every day of my life”.
“He had transcended himself in my life, and had become the pattern of all my subsequent longings. Every time I looked into a lover’s eyes — even, I think, my husband‘s eyes — I wanted to see Luke’s eyes, green and urgent, holding me”.

An adventure of sorts follows through the seasons …. It’s a year I’ll remember for a long time.
James - newly having come-out to his parents - was obsessively in love with Luke, a new kid in town (staying for one year with his aunt and uncle on their farm).
Luke was slightly older than James. Their characteristics were quite different (in personality, physically and emotionally)
Luke and James were both from families with hardships (also quite different) …..very different types of turmoil.

I refuse to give the highly interesting storytelling away …. but I will share a few general aspects that I found meaningful to contemplate. When a teenager has desires for independence, and/or risk-taking tendencies along with identity exploration, peer pressure sensitivities, and social pressures…..
‘while’ their immediate family (parents, siblings), are also facing hardships …..(which seems to me to be quite common), …..it’s no wonder our lives are endlessly introspective….often thinking deeply about the meaning and fragility of everything.

Sean Hewitt is a poet, lecturer, and literary critic. This was my first experience reading his work. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE.

I’ll leave a few non-spoiler excepts - simply to show-off Hewitt’s beautiful prose.

“Part of me was still a child, reaching for her whenever I felt wounded or alone, but there was another part, too, which recoiled from the way she looked at me, as though she could see right through me. In her eyes, I saw my own transparency, as if she had exposed me, and so there was a streak of cruelty in what I felt for her in that moment. I saw that she knew me, and some frightened part of my personality had to insist that she didnt”.

“There was rubbish under the viaduct, and the concrete on the banks of the arches was patterned in hexagons where debris and crisp packets had been blown and started to turn pale. There was a slight breeze under here, as if the cold air was funneling through to the fields and sunlight behind me. The breeze tugged lethargically at the litter so, along with the rumble of the cars above, there was the occasional tinny sound of an empty can being ushered along the tarmac. I glanced up at those dark eaves, and the passageway where the road workers might go, and I noticed a tent up there, a pile of bottles, a sleeping bag unravelled and dirty across the top of the concrete stairs”.

“I didn’t know how to live my life anymore, I didn’t know how to choose between this delicate, innocent world, and the future I was driving myself headlong into”.

An absolute beautiful, intimate, unsparingly insightful account of longing, loneliness, desire, and love .

At its core, *Open, Heaven* serves as an exploration of boyhood, with its many tensions and alienations. These are further complicated by the protagonist’s queerness, which emerges despite the barren landscape it springs from. But while guilt and shame have long been woven into queer narratives because of historical oppression, here they serve less as an honest reckoning with internal conflict and more as a reinforcement of the idea that queerness is inseparable from suffering. The novel’s rural small-town setting justifies their presence to some degree, but their stifling weight feels more like an inevitability than an inquiry.

And though Hewitt’s language has proven capable of sublime acrobatics in his past works, here it moves at an even pace, focused solely on its destination. It halts often, circling back on itself, lingering over past ruminations, whether relevant or not. This, inevitably, disrupts its flow. Similarly, the prose lays thoughts bare, stripped of ambiguity or allure, flattening every opportunity for sensory or intellectual engagement.

The reader is kept firmly at a distance, unable to explore or interpret beyond what is dictated. Step by step, they are led through a story of uneasy obsession, as though on a leash. But though it fronts as love, no true feeling takes hold in *Open, Heaven.* Love, guilt, appreciation, dread—none find respite in the words or deeds of the protagonist, a self-proclaimed fantasist. And none extend to his ailing brother or parents, though all three spend the length of the novel constructing bridges from the feeble materials at their disposal.

Similarly, James' fixation on Luke, the slightly older boy who unsettles him, is driven more by projection than by any genuine connection. His intense focus on Luke’s physiology, including the warmth of his spittle, gives their dynamic a clinical, almost detached quality. This detachment extends to James’ own body: the yeasty smells of his want are described with a blunt frankness that feels uncomfortably intimate, as though the rawness of his physicality lacks the softening lens of self-awareness.

But unlike the visceral, painful exploration of desire, friendship, and sexuality in Keith Hale’s *Clicking Beat on the Brink of Nada,* where emotions are presented as complex, disjointed, and deeply felt, James’ feelings for Luke exist more as untouchable archetypes. Despite the circular trajectory of his thoughts, they remain insubstantial, too distant to truly grasp or connect with.

The examination of the human psyche, with its many flaws and complexities, is deserving of nothing but praise. However, when judging a novel’s appeal, readability remains an unforgiving metric. Ultimately, the world of *Open, Heaven* feels too flat, and its quiet emotions too detached from existence, to offer a truly meaningful exploration.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Please keep in mind the following content warning: Sexual Content, Homophobia, Mental Illness, and Toxic Relationship.

This was a good book, the writing was great and the themes explored were interesting, however, I always struggle with literary fiction. Sometimes I find them too sad, too realistic, when I just want some escapism. However, some of my favourite books are literary fiction and very depressing (Giovanni's Room comes to mind), so what was different about this book? Ultimately, I didn't connect with the characters as I hoped.

James as a character was quite relatable at times. I too know what it's like growing up as queer in a small town and the loneliness that comes with it, even though I was still in the closet and far from the only queer kid there. But while I didn't hate his character, I had trouble finding him interesting. While normally I prefer likeable characters, I don't always have to as long as they're interesting.

I do think this book did a great job sometimes how we isolate ourselves even more when we're lonely and the dangers of giving all ourselves for love. It was painful to see James isolate himself from others the more he became obsessed with Luke. The setting and the writing were beautiful, it was easy to feel like I was right there in a small Irish village, which is honestly what carries most of the rating. It makes me want to search for more books set in villages.

While this book wasn't exactly the right fit for me, I can see someone who is into literary fiction way more than me enjoying this book.

An absolutely beautiful book. I felt the angst and confusion, joy and deep need that James experiences as he falls in love and also tries to find independence from his family. Wanting to belong, yet needing to be his own person. It’s so vivid and so very human and relatable. Set in a small town in Ireland in the 1990s. Highly recommend.
Read an e-ARC provided by NetGalley.

Many thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing me this ARC.
The language was beautiful, replete with turns of phrase and images that twisted around in my mind begging to be examined more closely. Sean Hewitt is, without a doubt, a poet. Unfortunately for me, I found the poetic language a bit distracting for the story. I feel bad saying that, but in my honest experience the plot points kind of glided off my brain and I kept having to reread passages, like the language was sapping strength from the narrative.

well i did not expect to get as emotional as i did for this book! there's so many precious themes explored in this story that i felt so connected too such as what it feels like to grow up queer and isolated and with a growing urge to just get away from everything. it's all written so well and deserves to be applauded for it's tender and real approach. there's just something about reading a book where you can relate so strongly to the main character that makes it all the more worthwhile. broke my heart and stitched it right back up. super thankful to have received the arc for this story and i hope it's enjoyed by many others as well.

Open, Heaven is a beautifully written book that explores the queer teenage experience. It opens with an adult James returning to his hometown after quite a few years and then flashes back to 16-year-old James' first experience truly yearning for —Luke, whose own tragic circumstances have sent him to James' town. The writing is gorgeous and paints a vivid and, at times, haunting picture of a gay teenager coming of age in a small town.

This book is definitely worth the read, and is a good reminder that your history matters, even as it falls further in the rearview mirror.

Note: I received a free ARC from Goodreads in exchange for an honest review.