April & Oliver

Readers will savour the bittersweet taste of first love with a twist of darkness in Tess Callahan's debut novel... Callahan's grace and restraint that are sure to win her legions of readers, beguiled by her prose and yearning for her next book.

www.bookpage.com

Callahan spins a dark, gritty tale of love, yearning, and choices while presenting engaging characters and substantial action that packs more than a few punches. Wise beyond words.

Library Journal

Think of it as a summer read with benefits.

Daily Candy

Tess Callahan explores themes of love, loss and the scars life leaves on us in her painfully poignant novel April & Oliver. It is a lovely story. The characters are heart-rendingly believable as the pair struggle to find the seeds of who they once were and where exactly they went off the tracks. It's a tale of first love and the enormous depth of feeling left for someone who knows exactly from where each of your scars comes.

Lindsey Losnedahl, Las Vegas Review

In this memorable debut, Callahan offers a uniquely funereal love story that focuses on a stagnant friendship-turned-untenable romance between unlikely life-long friends... Callahan's poetic style and grasp of emotion gives proper weight to April's loss and Oliver's secrets, and is sure to engage, sadden, and enthrall readers.

Publishers Weekly

In the delicious tradition of Jane Austen... The sexual electricity between April and Oliver sets off sparks... The result is a moving story and an impressive debut.

Boston Globe

Readers will find their bumpy road compelling, a sensitive and emotional account of two people grappling with the complicated force of mutual attraction when it strikes the right people at the wrong time.

Washington Post

The urgency of Callahan's narrative and its volatile juxtapositions--innocent passion and dark sexuality; duty and desire; first love and ruined love--make it impossible not to care deeply for these characters and their thwarted yearning and their heart-wrenching stories.

Bob Shacochis, National Book Award-winning author of Easy in the Islands

Grappling fates are the DNA of suspense, and Tess Callahan braids loss, longing, romance and violence into a tense, gratifying narrative. The characters in APRIL & OLIVER feel inexorable--either destined or doomed to be together. The need to discover which--and how--keeps the reader turning pages.

Sven Birkerts, author of Reading Life