A love story about two people pulled apart by the same force that draws them together: music.

It’s a Friday night in a campus bar in Berkeley, fall of 2000, and Percy Marks is pontificating about music again. Hall and Oates is on the jukebox, and Percy—who has no talent for music, just lots of opinions about it—can’t stop herself from overanalyzing the song, indulging what she knows to be her most annoying habit. But something is different tonight. The guy beside her at the bar, fellow student Joe Morrow, is a songwriter. And he could listen to Percy talk all night.

Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs—and the results kick off a partnership that will span years, ignite new passions in them both, and set Joe on a path to indie-rock stardom. But it also bruises Joe’s ego, and traps Percy in a role she resents. How long can Percy ignore the roars of her heart, and of her own unique talent, to protect their thrilling collaboration?

Moving from Brooklyn bars to San Francisco dancefloors, Deep Cuts examines the nature of talent, obsession, belonging, and above all, our need to be heard.

Holly Brickley's profile page

Holly Brickley is originally from Hope, British Columbia. She studied English at UC Berkeley and received an MFA from Columbia University. She now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two daughters. Deep Cuts is her first novel.

"Tender as a ballad and pleasurable as a pop song, Deep Cuts is both a nostalgic romp into the indie sleaze era of the early aughts and a timeless love story of creative collaboration, competition and ambition." —Coco Mellors, author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein and Blue Sisters
"Warm, nostalgic, totally engrossing. I loved this novel." —Liz Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The God of the Woods

"I absolutely loved Deep Cuts—clever and heart-wrenching and addictive, the kind of novel that grabs you in an instant and takes you reeling through its pages." —Miranda Cowley Heller, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Paper Palace

"Deep Cuts is an incredibly special book, one of the best I’ve read in a very long time. Moving, beautiful, rich with emotion, it’s an epic love story and the story of a woman finding her creative power, all rolled into one. Extraordinary.” —Beth O’Leary, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Flatshare and The Switch
"Every writer knows the highest compliment is envy: I wish I'd written that. Holly Brickley's Deep Cuts is a joy: fizzy, moving, endlessly smart. Brickley doesn't just write well about music, she anatomizes why and how we love it, and she makes us feel the stakes of that love. So, I wish I'd written that." —Claire Dederer, national bestselling author of Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
"Smart, sensitive and assured, Deep Cuts tells us as much about the hearts of its music-loving characters as it does about music's power to distill overwhelming feelings into indelible art. Holly Brickley's wonderful debut novel is every bit as satisfying as the songs she writes about. Brickley is the real thing, and so is Deep Cuts. —Peter Ames Carlin, New York Times bestselling author of Bruce and The Name of This Band is R.E.M.
"I find it hard to remember the last time I found a novel so relatable and enjoyable. Prepare to fall in love with Percy and Joe this spring." —Gillian McAllister, New York Times bestselling author of Wrong Place, Wrong Time
"Clever, nostalgic and deeply geeky, Deep Cuts is a literary indie-pop classic—brilliantly constructed, with a raw, heartfelt energy that captures an era. There is such a range of music, I ended up listening to so many wonderful, forgotten tracks while reading this." —Florence Knapp, author of the forthcoming The Names
"This dazzling debut isn’t so much a 'will they/won’t they' story as it is a 'should they?'With an assured, conversational tone, appealing characters, and an emotionally resonant love story, this one is sure to win the hearts of many readers."—Booklist, starred review
"A promising debut notable for sharp characterizations and a vividly conveyed sense of time and place."—Kirkus Reviews
"This is rich, immersive, and transportive storytelling, full of Walkmans and CD folders, love and yearnings (oh, is there yearning), and exceptional music writing. Songs and lyrics become charged with meaning as the characters use music to understand themselves and each other, and the result is breathtaking. Can you tell I’m obsessed? I really think this is going to be huge."—The Bookseller