This was a beautifully written book about love, loss, family, and understanding who you are. I really loved this book and I recommend it as an emotional and heartfelt read.

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 stars.

I was invested in the story, although sometimes the time frame changes took a little getting used to. No spoilers, but the last 15% went in a direction that I didn't expect, didn't necessarily agree with and were related to an incident that occurred earlier in the book that resulted in fisticuffs for being brought up. It didn't equate for me.

Nonetheless, I was appreciative of a story about sons and fathers and the differences in time and generation.

I received a complimentary copy of the novel from the publisher and NetGalley, and my review is being left freely.

This book offers a front-row seat to the intimate, often painful journey of two individuals wrestling with their past traumas, all while striving to build and nurture a complicated yet undeniably real relationship. At times, their actions may feel frustrating or perplexing—one moment, it seems like they're merely surviving, and the next, their behavior teeters on the edge of toxicity. There are moments of surprise, of bewilderment, and moments when you feel the rawness of their humanity. But this is life, isn't it? Messy, imperfect, and unpredictable.

The story unfolds as the delicate dance of two souls who, against all odds, found each other in the chaos of the world. They fight not just to be together but to understand and support one another despite the limited examples they've had of what love and connection can be. It’s easy to pass judgment from the outside, to critique decisions and reactions that don’t align with our own experiences, but how fair is it to judge when we have never walked in their shoes?

The final letter in this book broke something inside me. It moved me in ways I can’t fully articulate, leaving an ache in my heart that I know will linger long after the last page. This is a story that stays with you—one that demands you read with both an open mind and an open heart. It’s not just a book; it’s a quiet reminder of the fragile beauty in human connection, and it will hold a special place in my heart forever.

Davis anxiously prepared for his wedding to Everett. He must be the ultimate image of beauty as he walks down the aisle towards his beloved. He tried to put aside his feelings for his father, the Reverand Doctor John Freeman, who refused to witness the marriage of Davis to another man. After his mother died years before, the Reverand witnessed Davis with another man, and his fury drove Davis from his home in Ohio. Davis found refuge in New York, where he was able to pursue his musical talent and soon became a lauded violinist.
The happiness surrounding his wedding ceremony was interrupted when Davis received news that his father had died in a car accident. Davis became a different person. Memories of his childhood brought back traumatic memories which he could not escape from. Suddenly, he became a different person living in a different world leaving his marriage seriously at stake.

Denne Michele Norris has written something truly soul-stretching with When the Harvest Comes. This book is tender and fierce, grounded and poetic—a quiet storm of a debut that held me from the first page to the last.

At its core, it’s a story about identity, about becoming, and about the complicated, layered beauty and ache of family. As someone who’s wrestled with my own identity in the context of family, I felt this book in my bones. Family can be the thing that holds you together—but also the very thing that breaks your heart. Norris captures that emotional paradox with honesty and grace.

There’s also something sacred in watching a Black trans woman not just take up space, but expand it. Denne’s writing challenges the reader to evolve, to feel discomfort, to sit in complexity—and I see such beauty in being that reason for someone else’s growth. Her characters are vibrant, full of contradictions and longing, and they remind us that wholeness often comes from rupture.

This is more than a good book—it’s an important one. Lyrical, resonant, and rich with soul. I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

I like to write my reviews immediately after I finish a book. While everything is still fresh in my mind. But I’m not sure how to even tackle the things this book made me feel.

I guess I’ll start with a simple summary: Davis and Everett are a queer couple getting married. On their wedding day, Davis’s estranged father (“the Reverend”) dies in a car accident. The rest of the book is a deconstruction of the events leading up to the Reverend’s death and simultaneously the aftermath of his death.

This book is a love story. It is a tragedy. It is a happy story. It’s Black joy and trauma, and it’s queer joy and trauma all melded into one wrenching, profound book. As a cis-het white woman, I don’t have the tools to properly deconstruct the impact this book has. All I can feebly tell you is: read this book, you will not be disappointed.

Norris did an incredible job making this story about Davis and his journey (I feel bad calling him Davis in this review; please know that it’s not done as a slight our out of ignorance, I just don’t want to spoil a major part of this story) while weaving the back stories of Everett, Davis’s sister Olivia, Davis’s mother and the Reverend to create a beautiful tapestry of a story. This is Norris’s debut novel. I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

WHEN THE HARVEST COMES-DENNE MICHELE NORRIS-Publishing April 15th, 2025 by Random House.

Davis Freeman is a young black man, a viola virtuoso, who flees Ohio for New York City. He meets Everett, who he marries. During the wedding reception, he learns his father, the Reverend Doctor Freeman has been in a horrible car accident. Davis must look at his past, and address complex issues in order to have a future with Everett.

The writing in this book was marvelous. Norris writes with such emotion, I felt like I was in the book. The writing is also sensual, and soft and never wavers from its main job-to make you feel something.

Themes of childhood trauma, race, classism, sex, family, relationships, marriage and love.

This book made me feel all the feels. And if you know me, I’m not one to show the feels all the time. So, congratulations Norris, you killed it with this debut, and you broke me.

Thumbs up and a huge thank you to Will Lyman at @randomhouseca Marketing. @penguinrandomhouse

#debut #fiction #whentheharvestcomes #randomhouse #booksaredeadly #netgalley #booksbooksbooks
39m

Thank you Netgalley for this arc. It was so emotional and sad, but also heavy. This follows the story of a black man who was raised to never be touched by another man. Davis finds love and when he's about to get married, he finds out his father was in a tragic accident and it brings up all these emotions for Davis.

This book was just OK. There wasn’t a lot to it. The plot quickly got lost and instead we were bombarded with explicit sex scenes and foul language – both of which did absolutely nothing to advance the story. The story jumped all over the place with scenes from the past sprinkled in with the present. It was hard to keep everything straight. And the ending was too abrupt and hence, not believable. About 80% of the way through I started skimming because it was no longer holding my interest. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5/5 stars

I don't think this is for everyone (I'm in that group) but I have to appreciate the writing style. It did feel a bit jumpy at times with the multiple POVs but you also got into more people's heads which I appreciated. I think a big solution here would have been to be more structured on the movement between POVs. Overall this was good and I saw the vision, I am definitely looking more into their work now!

This is a beautiful novel of self-discovery, The novel focuses on Davis, a young queer musician whose estranged father dies on his wedding night. Through multi-POVs and timelines, the story is a beautiful illustration of the vulnerability and beauty in becoming your authentic self.

Norris's writing is beautiful and the prose of each character feels intimate and deliberate. I am not always the biggest fan of stories with multiple POVs and while I appreciate how it is necessary here to advance the story, it did feel like some of these jumps were rather abrupt.

This is timely and beautifully told - I can't wait to recommend!

i’m afraid that i never managed to connect with this story or its characters. it all felt painfully stereotypical, with little to no nuance in its approach to davis’s relationship with his father and, most importantly, his relationship with his husband.

I appreciated the story and really liked the concept of it, but I just didn't really enjoy the author's writing style. I wish the plot had been more streamlined and I found it too jumpy for my taste and in lack of clear goal. It also felt like the author kept throwing everything and kitchen sink as plot points, but the story still ended up lacking and feeling empty.

I was on the fence on weather to give this one or two stars, but in the end I'm feeling generous 'cause I think these are the kind of stories that need to be told more. I just wish they were better written.

Lastly I wanna thank Penguin Random House for reaching out to me and pre-approving me for this ARC. Even though I didn't end up enjoying this that much, feel free to reach out to me in the future.

This is a book that I would absolutely recommend to fans of contemporary litfic with lyrical writing, such as Ocean Vuong or Caleb Azumah Nelson books, but that’s not me. I like writing that is more raw and unfiltered than poetic. Not my cup of tea, but it will do well among the right audience.

Didn’t love but I liked it enough. There were a lot of pov’s which made it hard to connect to any one person. I also wanted more background on Everett and Davis’s fathers to see what happened that made them like they are

When The Harvest Comes

In When The Harvest Comes, we follow Davis, a determined black man ready to embrace his future with the love of his life, Everette. Everette, a slightly older white man, brings into Davis’s world a devotion and love he has longed for, despite the challenges posed by his own dramatic family.

However, on the day of their wedding, tragedy strikes, catapulting Davis back into a past marked by feelings of inadequacy, trauma, and fear. Rather than leaning on those who care for him, Davis retreats into himself, finding solace in the one constant in his life—music. Yet, even this refuge is intertwined with the complexities of an overbearing preacher father and a tumultuous childhood.

The journey unfolds as Davis learns to embrace the love surrounding him and, ultimately, to accept the person he is destined to be. This narrative beautifully captures love in its many forms: for music, for family, and the most profound love of all, for oneself.

I was truly inspired by this novel. The prose is not only witty but also lyrical, immersing readers in the experience of music as if it resonates off the page. Davis's journey is both heartbreaking and hopeful, leading to an ending that feels both gradual and deeply satisfying for him and the reader. It’s a fantastic book to discuss with friends!

The only area where I felt there could be more depth is in exploring the relationship between Davis and his father.

Highly recommend! 4.75 ⭐️

4⭐️ This is a beautiful story about love, resilience and identity. We follow Davis, who has worked really hard to build a life far from his estranged father’s expectations. But when his father’s sudden death occurs on his wedding day, old wounds reopen, threatening everything he’s worked for.
Not only is this a story about grief, it’s about queer POC who have to build their confidence to protect them against a world that wants to dim their light.
This is quite a journey that made me emotional and while the parts about classical music went on a bit too long (for me), they didn’t take away from the message.
I also thought that some of the flow wasn’t perfect, but again, that’s just a preference.
Overall, a great story!

This is an intense love story like no other.

It started with Davis and Everett getting married with the anticipation that this would be the best day of their lives. The emphasis was on Davis who was overjoyed to be with a strong man who appeared to be perfect for him: protective, passionate, charming and successful.

The wedding celebration in Montauk was huge although it was with mostly Everett’s family. At the last minute, Davis found out his sister, Olivia, would be there. However, not long after they said their vows, Olivia had sad news to share with Davis. Their father died that afternoon in a car accident and suddenly the excitement of the day was gone.

While it was tender and sweet, their love had a lot of complications from the past. They were a same-sex couple, Davis was Black and Everett was white and his brother at one point had a MAGA flyer in his bag. Davis had issues to resolve from his relationship with his father, the Reverend.

The reader also learned all about how Davis started playing a viola when he was young. After the wedding, Davis was on his way of becoming a famous musician with solo concerts and this was one of the highlights of the book.

The author put her heart and soul into this original story with picturesque writing. She made you feel the power of intimate love between Davis and Everett. However, I wish there was more background with Everett’s career and both of their fathers. The chapters were relatively short and easy to grasp. It had a lot of movement and joy with a satisfying ending.

My thanks to Random House and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of April 15, 2025.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be published in the US by Random House on April 15, 2025.

Full Rating: 4.25 stars rounded up

Denne Michele Norris’s When the Harvest Comes is a novel that aches with tenderness, loss, and the quiet resilience of becoming. It is a story of love—romantic, familial, and self—braided with the jagged edges of trauma and the suffocating expectations of Black masculinity. Through Davis, a Juilliard-trained violist navigating the eve of his wedding to his white fiancé Everett, Norris crafts an intimate portrait of a person searching for beauty and safety in a world that has too often denied both.

Davis’s life is a study in dualities—grace and violence, yearning and restraint, visibility and concealment. Music is his sanctuary, but it cannot shield him from the specter of his father, The Reverend, whose rigid notions of manhood and simmering alcoholism once fractured their family. The novel’s structure, winding between past and present, reflects Davis’s own internal looping—his longing to escape his origins and his inability to fully sever those roots. Norris withholds the specifics of Davis’s estrangement from his father until the novel’s close, a revelation that is devastating yet familiar: the brutality that often meets Black queer softness.

Davis’s fixation on beauty—his clean-shaven face, the femme jumpsuit he wears to his wedding—is not mere vanity but survival, an armor against a world that punishes difference. Yet, even in his relationship with Everett, which offers stability and acceptance, there are undercurrents of power. Everett’s whiteness, his family’s strained liberal tolerance, and his own role as the “masculine” partner subtly reinforce Davis’s vulnerability. The novel’s exploration of desire is thus inseparable from race, class, and gender—a sharp critique that cuts as deeply as it heals.

When Davis ultimately recognizes her transness and chooses the name Vivienne, a gift from her father’s final letter, it is both a rebirth and a reckoning. The Reverend’s flawed love, his need for a son, had been suffocating—but it had also held, however imperfectly, an aching awareness of who Davis truly was. The novel’s final act is not neat closure but a tender step toward wholeness.

If I had any reservations, it was that certain subplots—like Olivia’s abortion—felt underdeveloped, disrupting the novel’s otherwise fluid emotional arc. Yet, this is a minor flaw in a book that left me raw and breathless. Vivienne is a character I will carry with me—a reminder that survival is its own form of grace, and sometimes, becoming ourselves is the most radical act of love.

📖 Recommended For: Readers drawn to emotionally rich literary fiction exploring Black queer and trans identities; those who appreciatt character-driven stories about familial trauma and healing; fans of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong and Bellies by Nicola Dinan.

🔑 Key Themes: Race and Masculinity, Gender Identity and Self-Discovery, Familial Expectations and Inheritance, Queerness and Intimacy, Beauty as Survival.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Sexual Content (severe), Alcohol (minor), Alcoholism (minor), Homophobia (severe), Child Abuse (severe), Death of a Parent (moderate), Grief (moderate), Drug Use (minor), Blood (minor), Cancer (minor), Medical Content (minor), Suicide (minor).

This book is a sensual queer story full of love, acceptance, self-discovery and transformation! It has great commentary on the social dynamic of being a lone black man marrying into a white family and the feelings that accompany being a gay son wanting your father to be proud of you while not fitting into the standard, fatherly cis male expectations. There are also great notes surrounding sex that ring so true and aren’t spoken about enough in both books and life.
I believe that this was marketed as a story about grieving the loss of a father who is the root of a traumatic childhood. This is a heavy topic that many experience and anticipate but I didn’t feel like I was completely let into the mind of the main character and his turmoil as he moves through feelings of love, hate and fear. Because of his vague inner dialogue, I struggled to feel the full weight of his emotions or experience catharsis.
The story itself is small with few events and for this reason, I think it would read better as a short story or novella rather than 300 pages.