Evie Wyld’s The Echoes is a haunting and beautifully written novel that delves into generational trauma, grief, and Australia’s dark colonial past. Told through multiple perspectives, the story follows Hannah, a woman living in London with her partner Max—who, at the novel’s start, has died traumatically and now lingers as a ghost. From this spectral vantage point, Max gains insight into Hannah’s past, finally understanding the painful experiences that shaped her and the motivations behind her often inexplicable actions.
As the narrative unfolds, the reader is drawn into Hannah’s family history, deeply entwined with Australia’s brutal treatment of its Aboriginal population. Wyld’s writing is superb—lyrical, atmospheric, and emotionally charged. She masterfully weaves past and present, personal and historical, creating a novel that is both intimate and expansive. The Echoes is a powerful and unforgettable read, illuminating the weight of inherited trauma and the ghosts—both literal and metaphorical—that linger in its wake.

After Max's death, he finds himself haunting the London flat he shared with his girlfriend Hannah. Going back in time, Max is forced to consider why he is stuck Earth-side. We soon find out there may have been more to Hannah's reasons of why she fled Australia for London. A story about the complexities of family, grief, and intergenerational trauma, The Echoes is beautiful and evocative.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC. I had been looking forward to reading this book for a few months before it made it to the US, ever since seeing it on an Australian bookstagrammer's post, and it did not disappoint. I thought it was haunting and beautifully written, and while it took me some time to get into (owing more to my mood than the story), I'm glad I stuck with it and finished it.

Evie Wyld's work is often about trauma, especially the trauma women suffer, and the threads linking generations of women, both of which anchor her new novel, The Echoes. In the first of a rotating set of perspectives, we read from Max's perspective, remaining as a ghost after his death as he watches over his girlfriend Hannah; in the second, we read from Hannah's perspective in the fairly recent time before Max's death, often reflecting on their relationship and her estrangement from her family; and in the third, set further back in the past, shifting between the members of Hannah's family back home in Australia during her childhood. I really liked how this cycled around, Wyld using each section to carefully reveal a layer of personality or a key event. The Echoes is well-written and sensitively tells a story of trauma, tumult, and grief, and is on its face compelling, but something about it kept me at arm's length. I had trouble getting into it and felt it was dragging even when it wasn't a very long book, perhaps because the storylines don't all come together.

Thank you Netgalley & Knopf Publishing for an eARC ♥️

This book... wow. It's like it reached into my chest and squeezed my heart. ❤️‍🩹
So, what's it about? Well, "The Echoes" is a love story, a ghost story, and a family saga all rolled into one. It's about Max, a skeptic who never believed in the afterlife... until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost, he's stuck between worlds, trying to make sense of his own mortality. And then there's Hannah, his girlfriend, who's struggling to cope with his passing.🥲
As the story unfolds, we're taken on a journey through multiple generations, exploring the complexities of love, family, and the past. We delve into the secrets and lies that bind families together, and the ways in which our past experiences shape us into who we are today.
I love how Evie Wyld weaves together the past and present, revealing the intricate web of relationships and events that lead to the present day. It's like a puzzle, and each piece fits together perfectly.♥️
What really got me, though, was the way the book explores love, loss, and grief. It's like the author took all these complex emotions and put them into words. I felt seen, you know? Like, someone finally gets it. The pain, the sadness, the guilt... it's all there, and it's all so real.😭

this one unexpectedly drew me in and i ended up reading most of it in one day! part family history, part relationship autopsy, and part ghost story, the echoes has a lot of moving parts that work together to make a compelling read.

we begin by following max, a recently deceased writer who is now a ghost, stuck in the apartment he shared with his longtime girlfriend hannah. hannah’s family life has been a mystery to max, and the chapters alternate between max’s perspective as a ghost and hannah’s perspective before max passed away, as well as a chapter from the perspective of each of hannah’s family members during her childhood. sounds like a lot, but once you settle into the novel, this puzzling-together of hannah’s life becomes a really compelling way to move the story forward.

i thought hannah’s complicated family history was the most gripping part of the story. max’s role in hannah’s life and the plot dealing with their relationship didn’t feel as fleshed out to me, and max didn’t feel like as strong of a character compared to hannah and her family. i was unsure how i would feel about the ghost element, and despite it being the weaker plot, i thought it was a very effective device to demonstrate how you can never fully know someone.

the book deals with some heavy topics, most notably the stolen generations survivors of australia and how hannah’s family was living on stolen land. this was my first time reading about this topic and i’d be curious to hear opinions on how this was handled from indigenous folks. would be really interested in reading more about the topic!

Max is a ghost. He doesn't recall how he died. He's trapped in the apartment he once shared with his now-grieving girlfriend, Hannah, often from his viewpoint up in the corners with the spiders. Spanning across decades, we read about the minutia that make up a relationship, that day-to-day living of taking out the bins and plans for meals. But we also travel further back still to Hannah's childhood in Australia and the trauma of the land that she grew up on.

Admittedly, The Echoes is a trauma-heavy book. But what I think Wyld does well is expertly guiding us through the plot. This isn't trauma narratives for trauma's sake. This is about how trauma that isn't dealt with carries itself across generations, opportunities, and spaces and shapes us regardless.

The Echoes to me is an honest and introspective portrayal of generational trauma and how it echoes through us, but also the nitty gritty that makes up life and especially of relationships. I'd been looking forward to reading Evie Wyld's work for a while and I'm glad to have started with The Echoes. Now to explore her back catalog some more.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

did not end up finishing this book because there are just too many characters to keep up with and it took away from the central plotline. i didn't think any of the characters were developed enough for me to care about them. the writing felt choppy and the way it kept bouncing from one timeline to the next with the different characters was too confusing for me. i definitely think it was a me problem!

"The Echoes" is a nice and simple novel but the writing was too sparse. The overall story was sweet, but I think the tone of this book left me feeling disinterested. I had a difficult time relating and sympathizing with the characters. I like this book will appeal to a certain kind of reader, but for me it was just mediocre and lacked character development.

"From the award-winning novelist, a ravishing new novel set between London and rural Australia, both a love story and a ghost story.

Max didn't believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he is still here, he watches his girlfriend, Hannah, lost in grief in the apartment they shared and begins to realize how much of her life was invisible to him.

In the weeks and months before Max's death, Hannah was haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seemed to offer the potential of a fresh new chapter, but the past refused to stay hidden. It found expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max.

Both a celebration and an autopsy of a relationship, and spanning multiple generations, The Echoes is a novel about love and grief, motherhood and sisterhood, secrets and who has the right to reveal them - what of our past can be cast away and what is fixed forever, echoing down through the years."

I have become more than a little Australia obsessed lately. And I'm always down for any kind of haunting.

Evie Wyld’s The Echoes is dark, sad, and completely haunting. It follows Hannah, an Australian woman living in England after her boyfriend, Max, dies. But Max isn’t entirely gone—he’s stuck as a ghost in their old flat, watching Hannah and slowly figuring out what happened to him. Meanwhile, Hannah is dealing with her own ghosts, haunted by her past in Australia, a traumatic childhood, and the family she left behind.

Evie’s writing is gorgeous, and I loved how vividly she brings both London and the Australian outback to life. (The main reason I wanted to read this was the connection to Australia)

Max’s perspective was my favourite… he’s frustrated, lost, and desperate to reach Hannah. Hannah herself was harder to connect with; she’s distant and self-destructive, and while I understood why, it made the book feel even heavier. The whole story jumps between different timelines and perspectives, which sometimes worked really well and other times felt a little repetitive.

This book dives into grief, trauma, and family estrangement in a quiet, almost subtle way. Some parts really hit hard, but others felt like they weren’t explored enough ~ especially the parts about Indigenous communities in Australia, which felt unfortunately more like an afterthought.

Overall, The Echoes was beautifully written but…. I just found it to be really depressing. The characters are all flawed and hurting, and while I didn’t love them, their stories stuck with me. It wasn’t a perfect read, but Wyld’s writing is so strong that I’d still pick up more of her books.

Thank you to NetGalley & Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor

A really haunting and sprawling story that honestly is nothing like the blurb. Not a bad thing by any means, just very unexpected. I was quite moved by it but often confused as well. I would recommend to people but maybe I'd pitch it differently?

Thank you to NetGalley and Alfred A. Knopf for the ARC of this novel!

I just wasn't into this one. There were so many characters to keep track of and all the time jumps made the characters tricky to distinguish from one antoher and the plotline hard to follow. I found the characters too miserable to be compelling. I'm sure this is one others would enjoy, but it just was not for me.

I had a hard time getting into this book. It might be the mood I am currently experiencing. As I have written with other reviews, I am a major mood reader.. I may give this book another shot another time.

A beautiful, melancholic story about love and grief that completely transported me. I felt wrapped up in the writing from page one and underlined countless phrases.

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the ebook. This novel is told in parts by half a dozen characters, starting with Max, a ghost who still lives in his apartment in London, although no one can see him. He lives there with his girlfriend Hannah, who is trying to grieve his loss. The story jumps around in time, showing us their relationship and also jumping back to Hannah’s childhood in Australia and the secrets that her family lived with and the ones that Hannah ran halfway across the globe to get away from.

Max has died… he now haunts the London flat he shared with Hannah, his Australian girlfriend.
Hannah came to England and lives near a home that her grandmother once owned.. Hannah left a tumultuous family life growing up in Australia.
The story jumps from AFTER ..Max being trapped as a ghost in the flat watching Hannah… to BEFORE…Hannah’s life story growing up Down Under.
The ghost Max does not know how he died or a big secret Hannah had kept from him… he will find all this out by the end…
There is a great ending to this story … offering healing and hope.

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf for the ARC!

The Echoes follows two people, after one of them has died. It is split into a few parts: After, Before and Then, with a chunk of the narration being the man, Max, who died and is now a ghost. The story started with that, actually, and it's what pulled me in. The other chunk of the narration is from his girlfriend Hannah's perspective, both before he died, as well as digging into her past.
I thought the premise was lovely, and the prose at times haunting. But the divide between timelines was very often confusing.
I also struggled with feeling like the crux of the story wasn't actually the premise- which isn't a bad thing! But I felt like maybe too much was being juggled, and I would have liked a more cohesive storyline.
I can see the author's intent, and appreciate what was being done, though I don't know if it always worked for me.

I see what the author was trying to do (and believe it was in good faith), but what is being billed as a ghost story examining a relationship, quickly turns into a story about the colonization of the First Nations people in Australia. When the author isn't Indigenous herself, and when the topic comes up suddenly with shocking dialogue, you can't help but wonder: is this traumatic history needed? My answer is no, as it felt like those atrocities were being exploited rather than carefully and thoughtfully explored. No matter how successful the author was in delivering haunting prose that I did enjoy, the intent vs. impact will be the main focus here. I think it would have been easier to digest if the Author's Note was expanded upon and placed in the beginning.

In addition, while the author delivered on successful, haunting prose, it lacked a cohesive narrative direction, and the first four chapters felt like they could have been the start of four entirely different novels. I don't mind different POVs and playing with form, but again, it made me wonder if I was even reading the same novel I started with.

Thank you Knopf and NetGalley for the ARC.

Boring - I know it was necessary to connect to her past but I was way more interested in their romantic relationship and his death