Party Animal

A surprising and spellbinding novel, its language razor-sharp and filled with little delights. San Pietro manages to capture, with graceful command, those very last days of youth – when everything feels charged with wonder and meaning, when life brims with poetry and adventure and a mysterious sense of freedom

VINCENZO LATRONICO, author of Perfection

A reminder that a youth misspent is a youth well spent. I downed this fizzy, bittersweet spritz of a novel in a single gulp

ANDREW RIDKER, author of Hope

Finally, a proper novel about twenty-year-olds – full of rhythm and yes, naivety, of courage and fun . . . A story of pure energy

Rivista Studio

Certain books are able to capture, with deep understanding and a light touch, the state of an entire generation . . . The writing in this novel is a language completely its own, fleet-footed . . . pure, crystalline

L’Espresso

An electrifying debut, Party with Cassowary captures the feverish logic of youth – all its hunger and cruelty – with rare intelligence and style. Leonardo San Pietro writes with a sensual, searching intensity, each character’s voice bending to the pressure of the moment. Absolutely gripping – seductive, cerebral, and charged with real danger. I finished it stunned.

STEPHANIE DANLER, author of Sweetbitter

With a dark, offbeat brilliance that slips between the paradoxical and the philosophical, and a style that feels almost elusive, the author pushes readers to ask: what shape would the future take, if it suddenly stood right in front of us? For Leonardo San Pietro, the future looks like a cassowary.

Jury of the POP Opera Prima! Prize

A dazzling and charismatic whodunnit filled with villas, prosecco, psychedelic drugs, a gorgeous depressed heiress, an upstart artist, a fortune teller, rival friends, a beautiful garden, a giant killer bird, and the possibility of love. It has a stylized, cinematic fuzz to it. I loved it

RITA BULLWINKEL, author of Headshot

So stylish, so fun, so ominous, so assured, Party Animal is a psychological page-turner and a sensuous social satire unlike anything else I've read in years, one that sinks its talons in deep

SARAH THANKAM MATTHEWS, author of All This Could Be Different

Like locking eyes with a dangerous creature, Party Animal crackles through the reader with a bolt of glorious terror. Full of the heat and self-consciousness of youth, this is a humid, inventive, surreal novel about performance, fear and the discovery of beauty

SEÁN HEWITT, author of Open, Heaven

A wild fever dream of youth, angst and hedonism. As it builds toward its terrible climax, Party Animal will have you questioning all of your life’s decisions, and itching to let loose with your friends just one last time

TOBI COVENTRY, author of He's the Devil

A talon-sharp interrogation of friendship, jealousy, hubris, and desire told through a whirlwind of enthralling voices that cry out from the page. This bright flash of a novel will stay with you long after you read the last page

WILLIAM RAYFET HUNTER, author of Sunstruck

A rollercoaster read! From gossipy, fly-on-the-wall access to a party and all of its young attendees, to a crescendo of adrenalized prose. Leonardo San Pietro’s writing had me riveted

LOTTIE HAZELL, author of Piglet

Bingeable, wicked smart, inventive, whimsical. San Pietro has achieved the rarest of literary feats: a page-turner as entertaining as it is profound

NATALIE ROSE RICHARDSON, author of This Is an Actual Tragedy

"A dazzling and charismatic whodunnit filled with villas, prosecco, psychedelic drugs, a gorgeous depressed heiress, an upstart artist, a fortune teller, rival friends, a beautiful garden, a giant killer bird, and the possibility of love. It has a stylized, cinematic fuzz to it. I loved it."

Rita Bullwinkel, author of Headshot, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize