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Deep Cuts: A Novel Hardcover – February 25, 2025
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“Tender as a ballad and pleasurable as a pop song, Deep Cuts is both a romp into the indie sleaze era of the early aughts and a timeless love story.”—Coco Mellors, New York Times bestselling author of Blue Sisters
“Deep Cuts will live alongside all the unforgettable music that Holly writes about so beautifully, with her whole heart.”—Cameron Crowe, Academy Award–winning writer/director of Almost Famous
Look, the song whispered to me, that day in my living room. Life can be so big.
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 crush their egos again and again. Is their collaboration worth its cost? Or is it holding Percy back from finding her own voice?
Moving from Brooklyn bars to San Francisco dance floors, Deep Cuts examines the nature of talent, obsession, belonging, and above all, our need to be heard.
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateFebruary 25, 2025
- Dimensions6.45 x 1.05 x 9.55 inches
- ISBN-100593799089
- ISBN-13978-0593799086
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- I personally like to pretend the phrase “deep cut” has a totally different meaning, one that has nothing to do with anyone else’s opinion. How deep does it cut? How close to the bone? How long do you feel it?Highlighted by 229 Kindle readers
- Instead of sleeping that night I revised my end of the conversation in my head over and over, a lifelong pastime I always rationalized as productive since the lessons could apply to future interactions, though that never seemed to happen.Highlighted by 215 Kindle readers
- It’s just that authenticity seems to me only one metric by which to judge music, and I don’t see why it should swallow all the other ones, including beauty and fun.Highlighted by 199 Kindle readers
From the Publisher



Editorial Reviews
Review
“It is fair to say that I am the target audience for this book…I had no idea where this book came from, or how far away from me the author lives, but she spotted me through some kind of insane telescopic sight, and fired. . . . I haven’t read anything quite like Deep Cuts before, because part of its subject matter is a contemplation of the educated, deeply focused music fan’s relationship with talent . . . Brickley isn’t aiming for immortality, which is maybe why it has a chance of lasting.”—Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity
“Permit me a confession. As a music lover, I collect definitive listening experiences. The DLE is that rare moment when a song so exquisitely captures a time or a person or a feeling that it stakes a forever-claim in your heart. Years later, that exact feeling can return like an emotional landslide, in a single chord. It’s the great gift of music, or in this wonderful case—Holly Brickely’s Deep Cuts. It’ll forever transport me to a time in late-winter, the fog on the San Francisco Bay, and the gift of these funny, deep-feeling characters I never want to leave behind. Deep Cuts is my latest treasured DLE, in book form, and it will live alongside all the unforgettable music that Holly writes about so beautifully, with her whole heart.”—Cameron Crowe, Academy Award–winning filmmaker and journalist
“A captivating love letter to the early aughts and the era of ‘indie sleaze.’ . . . Deep Cuts delves into the raw, relatable realities of artistic ambition, toxic dynamics, and the complexity of growing up.”—Isaac Fitzgerald, TODAY
“It’s perhaps inevitable that Holly Brickley’s Deep Cuts will be likened to other noteworthy (feeble pun intended) books that incorporate music—most recently Daisy Jones and the Six, possibly High Fidelity, etc. What could have been a straight-up romance turns into something far more interesting.”—The Minnesota Star Tribune
“[R]ock novels are historically lame. Or a reboot of truth . . . But something brand new, that encompasses the reality and truth of being a music fan? I’m not sure any book exists that nails it as well as Deep Cuts.”—Bob Lefsetz, The Lefsetz Letter
“[D]azzling.”—Booklist, starred review
“It’s a banger.”—Publishers Weekly
“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
“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
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
He caught me singing along to some garbage song. It was the year 2000 so you can take your pick of soulless hits—probably a boy band, or a teenage girl in a crop top, or a muscular man with restricted nasal airflow. I was waiting for a drink at a bar, spaced out; I didn’t realize I’d been singing until his smile floated into the periphery of my vision and I felt impaled by humiliation.
“Terrible song,” I said, forcing a casual tone. “But it’s an earworm.”
We knew each other in that vague way you can know people in college, without ever having been introduced or had a conversation. Joey, they called him, though I decided in that moment the diminutive did not suit him; he was too tall, for one. He put an elbow on the bar and said, “Is an earworm ever terrible, though, if it’s truly an earworm?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s doing what it set out to do,” he said. “It’s effective. It’s catchy.”
“Dick Cheney is effective,” I said. “Nazis were catchy.”
The grin spread again.
The bartender slid me a beer and I took it gratefully, holding the cold pint glass against my cheekbone. The song ended and a clash of bar sounds filled its void: ice shaking in tin, shuffleboard pucks clacking, a couple seated at the bar hollering in dismay at a TV suspended above the bartender’s head. Joe ordered a drink and began pulling crumpled bills from his jeans pocket. I was about to walk back to my booth when “Sara Smile” by Hall and Oates began to play, and he let out a moan.
“What a perfect song.” His hand shot into the tall dark pile of curls atop his head, then clawed its way down his cheek as he listened.
Hall and Oates! I loved Hall and Oates! They were a rare jukebox selection for the time—a band whose ‘80s sound was seen as cheesy by most people I knew, too recent to be recycled, though that wouldn’t last much longer. I leaned against the bar next to him and listened to the gorgeous, sultry first verse.
“Actually,” I said, unable to stop myself, “I would call this a perfect track, a perfect recording. Not a perfect song.” I could tell he already halfway understood but I explained anyway, with a level of detail befitting an idea of far greater complexity: “A perfect song has stronger bones. Lyrics, chords, melody. It can be played differently, produced differently, and it will almost always be great. Take ‘Both Sides, Now,’ if you’ll excuse me being that girl in a bar talking about Joni Mitchell—any singer who doesn’t completely suck can cover that song and you’ll be drowning in goosebumps, right?”
It was a leap of faith that he’d even know the song, but he gave a swift nod. “Totally.”
I ducked to avoid being swallowed by the armpit of a tall guy receiving a drink from the bartender. Joe’s eyes stayed on me, focused like spotlights, so I kept going. “Now, ‘Sara Smile’—can you imagine anyone besides Daryl Hall singing this, exactly as he sang it on this particular day?”
Joe cocked his ear. Daryl Hall responded with a long, elegant riff.
I jabbed my finger in the air, tracing the melody. “See? The most beautiful part of the verse is just him riffing. A great song—and I’m talking about the pop-rock world here, obviously—can be improved by riffing, or ruined by riffing. But it cannot rely on riffing.”
Joe didn’t look smug or bored, which were the reactions these kinds of tangents had historically won me. He didn’t give me a lecture about relativism while air-quoting the phrase “good music.” He just lifted his bottle of Budweiser, paused it at his lips, and took a drink.
The tall guy beside us smacked his shoulder and Joe’s eyes lit up with recognition, so it seemed we were done. But before I could leave, he turned back. “What’s your name again?” He squinted at me rather severely, like I was a splinter he was trying to tweeze.
“Percy,” I said. “Bye.”
I walked back to the booth where my roommate and her boyfriend were planning a party I didn’t want to have. “Finally,” Megan said as I scooted in across from them on the honey wood bench. “Do you think one of those jugs of SKYY is enough? Plus mixers and a keg?” She showed me a Post-it inserted into her day planner. “That would be fifty each. Unless the mixer is Red Bull.”
Megan was an art history major but seemed happiest when doing simple math. I tolerated her orderliness by indulging in small acts of rebellion: unscrewed toothpaste lids, late phone bill payments—all calibrated to satisfy an inner urge for chaos without disrupting our friendship, which was important to me if only for its rarity, like an ugly diamond.
“I told Trent what we discussed about not inviting the whole world,” she said as she took a sip of her cosmopolitan, casting a significant look at the boyfriend. Poor Trent. I had expected them to be broken up by now.
“Is Joey Morrow coming?” Trent said to me, with one eye on Megan. When I shrugged, he pushed: “You were talking to him at the bar, right? He’s in my econ.”
Megan twisted to peer out of the booth. “Oh, him—Joey and Zoe who both like Bowie. Yeah, they’re cool.”
I knew this, that he had a girlfriend. I watched him across the bar and thought of a rom-com I’d seen at an unfortunately impressionable age in which a man says, gazing longingly at the female lead, “A girl like that is born with a boyfriend.” With Joe it wasn’t the flawless jawline, the arching eyebrows over wide-set eyes—those were offset, in the equation of attractiveness I had learned from these same movies, by the hooked nose and gapped teeth, the too-square shoulders atop a gangly-tall body. But the way he held those angular limbs, as if this jerking energy was the obvious way to make them work. The way he smiled so easily, and frowned so easily, tortured by a blue-eyed soul song. A boy like that is born with a girlfriend.
“Amoeba warning,” Megan muttered, her eyes darting over my shoulder.
I felt a rush of fight-or-flight but didn’t turn around. I knew she was referring to staff members of Amoeba Music, the legendary Berkeley record store where I’d worked sophomore year before switching to its inferior cousin, Rasputin Music, just up the street. Amoeba had been a hellscape of pretentious snobs and one thoroughly horrifying sexual encounter; Rasputin had been fine but boring, and nobody ever talked about the actual songs there either. Now I waitressed at a diner for twice the money and felt lucky to be free of the lot of them.
“Just the undergrads,” Megan updated. “The guy with the muttonchops and two others. No Neil.”
Of course. Neil would never come to a bar like this, blocks from campus, famous for accepting even the worst fake IDs. My adrenaline eased.
“Should you invite them to the party?” she asked, nostrils flaring. “You have two seconds to decide.”
This stumped me—I hated them, but I could talk to them. “Okay!” I yelped, just in time for the Amoebans to pass by our booth without so much as a nod, let alone a conversation. Trent whistled a low tone that could be interpreted as either pity or mockery.
I recognized all three from behind. We hadn’t been close as coworkers; they had been too focused on proving themselves to the elder statesmen of the staff, the ones with hard drug experience and complicated living situations in Oakland. There was also an incident in which the muttonchops guy had made fun of me for not knowing the Brian Jonestown Massacre and I’d responded by accusing him of being “all breadth, no depth,” a view I still held: music was a collector’s habit to those guys, a sprawl of knowledge more than a well of joy. But still. A hello would’ve been called for.
Megan caught my eye, communicating sympathy with her face. I sent back gratitude. “Let’s just get Red Bull for ourselves,” I said, and she beamed.
Trent began dropping hints that the two of them should go back to his apartment, even though it was only ten and our names were on the list to play shuffleboard. At least I’d gotten out for a bit, I figured. At least I wouldn’t have to keep discussing the relative merits of vodka mixers. He slid me his half-finished pint before following Megan out of the booth. It was the kind of beer that tasted like rubber bands but I drank it anyway, urgently, aware of the clock ticking on how long a girl could be alone in a bar before she became monstrously conspicuous. I feigned interest in a stained-glass lampshade hanging low over the booth.
“Name a song that’s both.”
Product details
- Publisher : Crown
- Publication date : February 25, 2025
- Language : English
- Print length : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0593799089
- ISBN-13 : 978-0593799086
- Item Weight : 1.16 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.45 x 1.05 x 9.55 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #18,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #306 in Women's Friendship Fiction
- #902 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #1,065 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Holly Brickley is originally from Hope, British Columbia. She moved to the US at 18, studying English at UC Berkeley before getting an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Instead of putting this education to any sort of literary use, she spent the next several years running around San Francisco and New York, working in market research and branding, and basically making a career of going out. She now lives with her husband and their two daughters in Portland, Oregon, where she prefers to stay in.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book entertaining and well-written, with one mentioning it kept them busy for a few days. They appreciate the music references throughout the story.
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Customers find the book entertaining to read, with one mentioning it kept them busy for a few days, and another noting its gut-punching insights.
"...That said, it was an easy read that kept me busy for a few days." Read more
"...The soundtrack approach to this book offered up curious, strange, mind blowing and gut punching insights...." Read more
"...I'm glad that I did even though I found the ending a little rushed. I'd give it a 4.5 if half stars were a thing. A quick and entertaining read...." Read more
"Loved this book and the nostalgia. I added a Spotify playlist of all the songs from the book and listed to them as they came up in the book...." Read more
Customers praise the writing quality of the book, finding it well-crafted and easy to read, with one customer noting there are no false lines of dialogue.
"...That said, it was an easy read that kept me busy for a few days." Read more
"...There was not a false scene, not a false line of dialogue, not a false emotion! How rare is that!..." Read more
"...Point blank, this book is well written...." Read more
"This was a very well written, very interesting novel about the connections between the two main characters and music...." Read more
Customers enjoy the music references in the book.
"...book hits a sweet spot for me with the setting (time and places), music references, and the angst of unrequited love, new adulthood and..." Read more
"This book was amazing. The banter and the music go to me so much. I can’t wait for the movie adaptation to come out." Read more
"...Loved the song aspect but ultimately it’s wasted and you feel bad as he seemed like a nice guy…but sadly he ended up with her...." Read more
"Music and books… perfect blend..." Read more
Reviews with images

For fans of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2025Format: KindleVerified PurchaseFirst things first, I have to say that I have no idea why one of the top reviews for this book references Percy as being unattractive and that's why Joe wasn't into her. The author makes it VERY obvious throughout the book that Percy is indeed attractive, because several people throughout the book tell her she is, from her friends to strangers in bars to boys she hooks up with or dates. Percy feeling unattractive has a lot to do with two things that perfectly intersect: her massive lack of self-confidence, and the fact that what was considered attractive during the book's time period was heroin chic. It's no coincidence that the girls Percy admires as effortlessly attractive (Zoe and Nomi) both have this skinny and angular body type. The entire book is basically her coming of age and realizing the ways women are stuck into boxes and used by men, and that she is talented, beautiful, and worthy of being with Joe. He was ready to be with her long before she was ready to be with him, so it's frankly straight up wrong to say that he only likes her when she's more popular; he's literally a famous singer and still tries to choose her twice before she finally relents.
With that off my chest, my general review: I love a good character-driven story, so when though this was not my time period and I didn't know hardly any of these songs they talked about, I really loved this book. I told myself I wasn't going to buy it but then I downloaded the preview and read through that in one sitting and knew I'd be buying the whole book. I'm glad that I did even though I found the ending a little rushed. I'd give it a 4.5 if half stars were a thing. A quick and entertaining read. I especially enjoyed seeing Percy have basically her own version of the feminist awakening. I'm not sure if that's something men would really vibe with as much, but not every book is for every one.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2025Format: KindleVerified PurchaseFor all who love music, need music, and create music, the story of these musicians, their connections, creations, and collaborations will supply the story behind, behind the sounds, chords, and bridges, behind the words, phrases, and lyrics.
Not a story for all, but the settings capture moments in time just as songs do and have done creating soundtracks of our lives.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2025Format: KindleVerified PurchaseUPDATE: I think I wanted to believe the boy didn’t like her initially because his girlfriend was a lesbian as much as the author did, but can we be honest here? He didn’t want to sleep with her because she wasn’t attractive and she really had to grow on him. And now that I see the people cast in the movie, I’m annoyed that the woman set to play grumpy, frumpy, friendless Percy is gorgeous. Why can’t we make a real underdog story? Wouldn’t we root for the relationship more if the frumpy girl gets the hot boy since that’s actually what happened? Someone like a young Mae Whitman?
Original review: Structurally, it’s a solid novel. I can’t remember why I picked it up, but the music references drew me in—the author and I share the same taste in music, but I can’t imagine someone enjoying it who is not a fan of the music from this very specific genre from this very specific time period. She does lean heavily toward autofiction, which is fine, but it did get kind of distracting and I felt like I had to give some of the very unlikable characters a pass which was, of course, the only way I could actually believe the protagonist was that friendless and that much of a late bloomer. Also, I also don’t really appreciate stories about people who go to fancy schools. It’s just so unnecessary and it feels like a shameless “look how smart I am” banner. That said, it was an easy read that kept me busy for a few days.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2025Format: KindleVerified PurchaseI can’t even begin to say how much I loved this book! There was not a false scene, not a false line of dialogue, not a false emotion! How rare is that! When you close this book, you will know these people know their lives and you will absolutely know how the rest of it goes! I can’t recommend this book highly enough and going forward, I will read anything this author writes. She is brilliant !
- Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2025Format: HardcoverSplit between the restless energy of New York and the moody pulse of San Francisco, this novel is a striking coming-of-age story wrapped in creative obsession. Much like Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, it explores the deep, often maddening complexities of creative partnerships—the intimacy, the resentment, the years-long tug-of-war between collaboration and identity.
At the heart of the story is a duo bound not by romance (at first) but by art and ambition. Their dynamic is infuriating and magnetic, filled with moments of tenderness and emotional sabotage. The characters can be frustrating, yes—but they’re frustrating in the way real people often are when art and ego collide.
Laced with 2000s nostalgia and saturated in references to music culture, the novel is steeped in potent, figurative imagery that heightens its emotional stakes. It captures the toxic allure of creative obsession while never losing sight of the cost.
Thank you to Netgalley/Crown for the gifted ARC and finished edition. Opinions are my own.
4.0 out of 5 starsSplit between the restless energy of New York and the moody pulse of San Francisco, this novel is a striking coming-of-age story wrapped in creative obsession. Much like Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, it explores the deep, often maddening complexities of creative partnerships—the intimacy, the resentment, the years-long tug-of-war between collaboration and identity.For fans of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2025
At the heart of the story is a duo bound not by romance (at first) but by art and ambition. Their dynamic is infuriating and magnetic, filled with moments of tenderness and emotional sabotage. The characters can be frustrating, yes—but they’re frustrating in the way real people often are when art and ego collide.
Laced with 2000s nostalgia and saturated in references to music culture, the novel is steeped in potent, figurative imagery that heightens its emotional stakes. It captures the toxic allure of creative obsession while never losing sight of the cost.
Thank you to Netgalley/Crown for the gifted ARC and finished edition. Opinions are my own.
Images in this review
Top reviews from other countries
- Vijay SwanglaReviewed in India on June 4, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars Better
Format: HardcoverVerified PurchaseGood to read
Vijay SwanglaBetter
Reviewed in India on June 4, 2025
Images in this review
- mrs veronica sikoraReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars deep cuts
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchaselarge print is good when you have a poor eye sight