Fire Rush

A brilliant, exuberant novel. Full of beauty, musicality and feminist power

Irenosen Okojie, author of NUDIBRANCH

This beautiful, sprawling narrative is wrought with an incredible precision and a musicality which carries every sentence. Crooks' novel haunts but make space for hope as well

Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of OPEN WATER

I was blown away by Fire Rush - an exceptional and stunningly original novel by a major new writer... Her mesmerising, imaginative and incantatory writing leaves us swaying to the bass of the visceral rhythms she so powerfully describes. By the end of the novel, I felt charged and changed and already longed to reread it

Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

A window into the dub scene at the time, with rhythmic, lyrical writing and a story about raving, love and the impact of police violence... Both a page turner and a literary novel... Truly remarkable

Vogue

An immersive debut... This is a triumph

Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review

Remarkable... In terms of sheer lyrical force it stands head and shoulders above most debuts

Daily Telegraph

Fire Rush is a book with the power to fill and break your heart... One of the strongest debuts of the year

Skinny

Ambitious, atmospheric... This is a full-blooded novel of passion and anger with a deep, bassy resonance

Sunday Times

A rich and rhythmic story... Fire Rush is a startlingly good debut

i

A startling debut novel... Jacqueline Crooks has crafted a richly textured world... She succeeds with great aplomb

Guardian

Fire Rush is a lyrical debut powered by uncompromising political force

Mail on Sunday

Jacqueline Crooks' lyrical debut dances to the rhythm of the reggae music that pulses throughout it, in a powerful portrait of black womanhood

UK Press Syndication

An eye-opening, jaw-dropping story

Critic

A scorching, lyrical debut, soaked in dub reggae

Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2023*

A heady swirl of a novel that pulls the reader in from the first page... A fabulous, absorbing read

Maggie O'Farrell, author of THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT

A colourful, immersive debut... Throughout, a passion and anger resound as we gain a glimpse into a rarely observed British subculture

Sunday Times, *Summer Reads of 2023*

Few have channelled so well the skittering beats and transcendent air of dub music as Crooks does in her semi-autobiographical debut... Startlingly vivid reading

Daily Telegraph, *Summer Reads of 2023*

Incantatory

New Yorker

A wonderfully literary, musical and original novel about a culture and era that rarely makes the pages of fiction… Crooks writes with depth and maturity

Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year*

Penetrates a subculture that we are unused to seeing represented in British fiction, depicting it in all its messy, exuberant complexity

Sunday Times, *Books of the Year*

A hypnotic journey into the dub reggae scene

Guardian, *Books of the Year*

Fire Rush is an incredible marriage of music and prose set amid the late 1970s dub reggae scene

Bookseller