***IPPY AWARDS: BEST REGIONAL FICTION: CANADA-EAST – SILVER***

***THE GLOBE AND MAIL SUMMER'S HOTTEST READS***

Jess is a sensitive creature of habit. Cait is her passionate and impulsive best friend. And in Melt, Heidi Wicks follows the lives of these characters from their teenage years into their late thirties—through drifting desires, fake tans, economic turbulence, kids, grief, job loss, love loss, and personal renewal. Shifting radiantly between the late nineties and the present day, Melt explores the life-sustaining anatomy of friendship and the complex relationships we have with our pasts.

Heidi Wicks has written for Riddle Fence, Newfoundland Quarterly and The Globe and Mail. Her debut novel, Melt (2020), was featured in the Globe and Mail’s Hot Summer Reads list and received a silver medal IPPY (Independent Publisher) award. She received the 2019 Cox and Palmer Creative Writing Award. She is featured in short fiction collection Hard Ticket and the creative nonfiction collection, Best Kind. She lives in her beloved hometown of St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Heidi Wicks' profile page

• Runner-up, Atlantic Books Today Staff Pick
• Runner-up, IPPY Awards: Best Regional Fiction: Canada-East
• The Globe and Mail Summer's Hottest Reads

"Five Stars for a really fabulous summer-feel-good read! I melted right into the book and let it sweep me away. Funny, sharp, snappy and as bright and energetic as its cover, Melt is a delightful story of friendship ups-and-downs, marriage, jobs and kids. I can't imagine anyone not loving this book!"

The Minerva Reader

"I really appreciate stories that shine a spotlight on the importance of love between friends, and this book is one of my go-to recommendations for people who feel the same."

Digitally Lit

“Melt twists and turns as it recounts the then and now tales of lifetime friends, Jess and Cait. From teenagers in the 90s to 30-somethings today, theirs is a layered, lifelong friendship that will surely have you calling up your own bestie to reminisce. Dealing with dashed hopes, rebounds, losses and fresh starts, it is heartwarming, heartrending and humourous. The chapter titles alone are a journey in emotions: ‘fake tans, false hopes,’ ‘salt in the womb,’ ‘wind warning in the wrecked house’ and ‘a healing separation agreement of horseshittery.’ Sharp details about coming of age in St. John’s in the late nineties are especially nostalgic–-whether you experienced it firsthand or not, after reading Melt, you’ll think you had.”

Atlantic Books Today

“Wicks is deft at layering emotions and gestures — heart-rending, perilous, comic — an everyday crisis overlaid with a palimpsest of the superhero. Striking imagery is a constant (“Cait sits on the floor in the bedroom doorway of her new house. In front of her is a cubist mountain range of Ikea boxes that reminds her of Picasso’s Girl with Mandolin painting, laid on its side”), and details like fashion (eight-ball jackets, Lululemon, palazzo pants) spot-on... The two protagonists snap and sparkle with a wonderful authenticity.. They sashay with wit and realism. You’d swear you’d just passed them walking the Signal Hill trail."

Joan Sullivan

"Wicks has written a sharp and funny novel that runs the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous. Is Jess about to jeopardize everything that makes life worth living by embarking on an affair with an old flame? Did Cait's daughter just rub a booger on a piece of crystal at a funeral reception?... At its core, MELT is about family and friends, and how our view of those most important elements in our lives both changes over time and remains exactly the same. One small word of advice. Pay attention to the chapter headings. They include some wicked puns..."

Downhome Magazine