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No Names
Inspired by the iconic punk scene of the late ‘70s, No Names blurs the lines of affection and sexuality in a haunting tale of desire, hope, and loss.
Mike and Pete were "no names," two working-class boys lost in the shuffle of their stratified town, brought together by their love of music. By 1978, their punk band was blazing across the underground scene. Now in 1993, Mike is a hermit living alone on a dot of an island in the North Atlantic. When a mysterious letter from an unlikely fan named Isaac arrives, he's pulled right back into the pain he’s spent over a decade running from.
Isaac longs for an escape from his lonely teenage life. A chance discovery of the No Names’ only album catapults him into obsession over the god-like rockers and the tantalizing possibility of connection.
As their stories collide in a tangled web, mistakes breed consequences that echo through the decades like the furious reverberations of a power chord.
Mike and Pete were "no names," two working-class boys lost in the shuffle of their stratified town, brought together by their love of music. By 1978, their punk band was blazing across the underground scene. Now in 1993, Mike is a hermit living alone on a dot of an island in the North Atlantic. When a mysterious letter from an unlikely fan named Isaac arrives, he's pulled right back into the pain he’s spent over a decade running from.
Isaac longs for an escape from his lonely teenage life. A chance discovery of the No Names’ only album catapults him into obsession over the god-like rockers and the tantalizing possibility of connection.
As their stories collide in a tangled web, mistakes breed consequences that echo through the decades like the furious reverberations of a power chord.
352 pages, Paperback
First published April 8, 2025
11 people are currently reading
585 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
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May 12, 2025DNF @ 53%
I find myself in the weird mood to scream in frustration 😩 This book was one of my anticipated books this years, the blurb sounded so good, exactly right up my alley and then it all fell so flat and I don’t care about the characters, who do weird things and seem so far from reality and it just makes the story unbelievable and unreal and even though many things seem to happen, I am bored. I wanted to keep going, hoping I would reach a point that I did start caring, that I was curious to see what this was all about, but I just find myself dreading to continue, and that’s not what reading is about, so even though I bought this book (which was one of the more expensive ones), I can’t go on and finish it for sake of the money I spent on it.
I don’t know what to say about the writing, it might be part of all the above reasons, it might be that I was expecting too much, or maybe it was my mood, but it’s just not resonating with me. And I’m so frustrated about that, ugh!
Anyway, I closed the book and on to my next read. Hopefully this doesn’t mean I’m heading towards a bookslump🙁
I find myself in the weird mood to scream in frustration 😩 This book was one of my anticipated books this years, the blurb sounded so good, exactly right up my alley and then it all fell so flat and I don’t care about the characters, who do weird things and seem so far from reality and it just makes the story unbelievable and unreal and even though many things seem to happen, I am bored. I wanted to keep going, hoping I would reach a point that I did start caring, that I was curious to see what this was all about, but I just find myself dreading to continue, and that’s not what reading is about, so even though I bought this book (which was one of the more expensive ones), I can’t go on and finish it for sake of the money I spent on it.
I don’t know what to say about the writing, it might be part of all the above reasons, it might be that I was expecting too much, or maybe it was my mood, but it’s just not resonating with me. And I’m so frustrated about that, ugh!
Anyway, I closed the book and on to my next read. Hopefully this doesn’t mean I’m heading towards a bookslump🙁
February 26, 2025
i rarely manage to read advance reader copies on time, so it is with great honor and anticipation that i want to talk to you about this book that I absolutely devoured!
no names tells the story of two young boys who, overnight, become punk scene geniuses in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. but their destiny takes a dramatic turn, altering the future they were so close to grasping. no names is the tragic tale of a duo / best friends / lovers descent into darkness after losing one of its members.
this is one of the most beautiful fictional stories of friendship and, ultimately, love that i’ve ever read. it’s poetic, rhythmic, at times brutal, at times delicate. i loved the way the narrative alternates between continents and generations. Mike, Pete, Daniel and Isaac, along with the links between them are layered, textured, complex, and tormented. the author masterfully captured how music can forge long lasting bonds and evoke deeply personal emotions between the protagonists. it resonates, accompanies us, brings back memories, and shows how a single song can embody a cherished person, how music is meant to be shared.
this book is simply excellent! read it! i need to talk about it! no names confirms that poets write the best novels!
no names tells the story of two young boys who, overnight, become punk scene geniuses in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. but their destiny takes a dramatic turn, altering the future they were so close to grasping. no names is the tragic tale of a duo / best friends / lovers descent into darkness after losing one of its members.
this is one of the most beautiful fictional stories of friendship and, ultimately, love that i’ve ever read. it’s poetic, rhythmic, at times brutal, at times delicate. i loved the way the narrative alternates between continents and generations. Mike, Pete, Daniel and Isaac, along with the links between them are layered, textured, complex, and tormented. the author masterfully captured how music can forge long lasting bonds and evoke deeply personal emotions between the protagonists. it resonates, accompanies us, brings back memories, and shows how a single song can embody a cherished person, how music is meant to be shared.
this book is simply excellent! read it! i need to talk about it! no names confirms that poets write the best novels!
May 16, 2025
NO NAMES
Greg Hewett
Thank you @coffeehousepress for this copy!
NO NAMES starts off with pure blue electricity. I was gripped and invested early on, and spent a LOT of time with this novel. In quick perspective shifts among characters and timelines, this novel rapidly sets itself up as fresh, exciting, and interesting. A man is alone on an Island in the North Atlantic, playing classical guitar and in communication only with one person, a pianist he knows from long ago. He refuses to leave the island until a boy finds an old record by the NO NAMES and makes it his life mission to seek out this one-hit wonder punk band that disappeared into oblivion.
This novel was expertly crafted and paced up until around page 200, featuring mainly the backstory and rise to fame of the band. After that, just like the band, the novel falls apart. The characters’ motivations are suspect from the beginning, but it’s easily chalked up to adolescent moodiness, drug abuse, and this consuming aura of PUNK. Eventually my ability to forgive gave way as the characters’ decision-making felt less and less true.
The book’s “twist” should have been great, but came across overbaked as the characters’ responses to the revelation are awkward and offputting.
More than 100 pages of the novel are extraneous, providing extensive closure that didn’t need so much exploration.
Moreover, I think the novel wanted, BADLY, to evoke a feeling of being in a smoky dive bar, standing room only, with blasting electric punk filling the room. It made me want to listen to 70s punk. In doing so, I realized the novel doesn’t put the reader in that place if they haven’t been there themselves. A lot of “sounded like nothing the audience had ever heard”s and descriptions of how the band players FELT while they played, as well as pseudocerebral musical descriptions that miss the mark of creating a feeling, which is what this novel needed to shine.
It has its sparks early on, don’t get me wrong. I wanted to love this one desperately all the way through. Unfortunately, as a whole, I’m left disappointed in the execution of the work about some characters who deserved more.
Greg Hewett
Thank you @coffeehousepress for this copy!
NO NAMES starts off with pure blue electricity. I was gripped and invested early on, and spent a LOT of time with this novel. In quick perspective shifts among characters and timelines, this novel rapidly sets itself up as fresh, exciting, and interesting. A man is alone on an Island in the North Atlantic, playing classical guitar and in communication only with one person, a pianist he knows from long ago. He refuses to leave the island until a boy finds an old record by the NO NAMES and makes it his life mission to seek out this one-hit wonder punk band that disappeared into oblivion.
This novel was expertly crafted and paced up until around page 200, featuring mainly the backstory and rise to fame of the band. After that, just like the band, the novel falls apart. The characters’ motivations are suspect from the beginning, but it’s easily chalked up to adolescent moodiness, drug abuse, and this consuming aura of PUNK. Eventually my ability to forgive gave way as the characters’ decision-making felt less and less true.
The book’s “twist” should have been great, but came across overbaked as the characters’ responses to the revelation are awkward and offputting.
More than 100 pages of the novel are extraneous, providing extensive closure that didn’t need so much exploration.
Moreover, I think the novel wanted, BADLY, to evoke a feeling of being in a smoky dive bar, standing room only, with blasting electric punk filling the room. It made me want to listen to 70s punk. In doing so, I realized the novel doesn’t put the reader in that place if they haven’t been there themselves. A lot of “sounded like nothing the audience had ever heard”s and descriptions of how the band players FELT while they played, as well as pseudocerebral musical descriptions that miss the mark of creating a feeling, which is what this novel needed to shine.
It has its sparks early on, don’t get me wrong. I wanted to love this one desperately all the way through. Unfortunately, as a whole, I’m left disappointed in the execution of the work about some characters who deserved more.
March 20, 2025
Run, don’t walk! This book comes out next month (April 8, 2025) and is one of the best debuts I’ve read.
I had no idea what to expect but was interested in the premise and fortunate to receive an ARC. Within the first 50 pages I was hooked. When I wasn’t reading this book, I was thinking about it and trying to google “No Names band” or “Mike Abramczyk” only to remember it’s all fiction. That’s how well developed these characters are, they feel real.
This was a nostalgic and at times heart wrenching read, but Hewett treats his characters with tenderness. The story spans five decades but doesn’t read as episodic. There were moments when I wished we would jump to the present to find out what happened, or when Hewett jumps to another character right after a big event with another, but by the end of the book you feel like there is closure and everything is revealed in due time. Even when I knew the faith of one of the main characters (there was enough foreshadowing) I still felt impatient to find out what happens next.
I don’t often leave reviews, even for books I love, but not only do I love this book, I want it to get the attention it deserves.
I had no idea what to expect but was interested in the premise and fortunate to receive an ARC. Within the first 50 pages I was hooked. When I wasn’t reading this book, I was thinking about it and trying to google “No Names band” or “Mike Abramczyk” only to remember it’s all fiction. That’s how well developed these characters are, they feel real.
This was a nostalgic and at times heart wrenching read, but Hewett treats his characters with tenderness. The story spans five decades but doesn’t read as episodic. There were moments when I wished we would jump to the present to find out what happened, or when Hewett jumps to another character right after a big event with another, but by the end of the book you feel like there is closure and everything is revealed in due time. Even when I knew the faith of one of the main characters (there was enough foreshadowing) I still felt impatient to find out what happens next.
I don’t often leave reviews, even for books I love, but not only do I love this book, I want it to get the attention it deserves.
Read
September 13, 2025DNF around page 100.
Very, very, much not for me I'm afraid. This was a runner-up for my book club, and I was really hoping it'd win. So, when I saw a copy in a bookstore while traveling, I picked it up and took it to a bar to read a bit. I've struggled with it for around 10 days since.
This book centers on teenage or thereabouts characters, who share a deep love of music, and are often musicians themselves. This means there is a lot of talk about different songs, lyrics, etc. Unfortunately, I absolutely detest reading song lyrics. This is a me problem, I want to be clear. It happens often enough, and the sort of saccharine or overly emotional quality to the dialogue alongside doesn't work for me. In many cases, I just could not believe the characters or the way in which they spoke, nothing felt true to me.
I think if you like fiction that centers on this age-group, and if you don't mind music lyrics in writing, my complaints won't matter. But I'm sorry to say it didn't work for me at all and I can't force myself through the rest.
Very, very, much not for me I'm afraid. This was a runner-up for my book club, and I was really hoping it'd win. So, when I saw a copy in a bookstore while traveling, I picked it up and took it to a bar to read a bit. I've struggled with it for around 10 days since.
This book centers on teenage or thereabouts characters, who share a deep love of music, and are often musicians themselves. This means there is a lot of talk about different songs, lyrics, etc. Unfortunately, I absolutely detest reading song lyrics. This is a me problem, I want to be clear. It happens often enough, and the sort of saccharine or overly emotional quality to the dialogue alongside doesn't work for me. In many cases, I just could not believe the characters or the way in which they spoke, nothing felt true to me.
I think if you like fiction that centers on this age-group, and if you don't mind music lyrics in writing, my complaints won't matter. But I'm sorry to say it didn't work for me at all and I can't force myself through the rest.
Read
June 13, 2025had to give up bc this lowkey happened to me and it’s too soon lol. but good
June 3, 2025
Real Rating: 3.75* of five
The Publisher Says: Inspired by the iconic punk scene of the late '70s, No Names blurs the lines of affection and sexuality in a haunting tale of desire, hope, and loss.
Mike and Pete were "no names," two working-class boys lost in the shuffle of their stratified town, brought together by their love of music. By 1978, their punk band was blazing across the underground scene. Now, in 1993, Mike is a hermit living alone on a dot of an island in the North Atlantic. When a mysterious letter from an unlikely fan named Isaac arrives, he's pulled right back into the pain he’s spent over a decade running from.
Isaac longs for an escape from his lonely teenage life. A chance discovery of the No Names’ only album catapults him into an obsession with the godlike rockers and the tantalizing possibility of connection.
As their stories collide, mistakes breed consequences that echo through the decades like the furious reverberations of a power chord.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Two-thirds of an excellent novel...after the twist, it's not excellent anymore. It's good, and as a contrast to almost two hundred pages of really outstanding build-up, I felt really let down by the ending. It was a messy trailing-off of several conversations, between characters and us, as well as each other. Multiple PoV novels are always...baggy...but this one's excitement and intensity came from the sense I had in the first part of the book that each person was picking up the thread of a narrative, was the response part in a call-and-response composition.
Much of that energy came from the way the voices wove around each other as they spoke of the times and events that the narrator before had no way of knowing. By the two-thirds mark, they were not telling the same story. They were following their own strands into a future not shared; it's like life, you meet, connect, intertwine for a time, then the time is over. The problem I had with that in this context is that it takes me from one kind of book...close harmony call-and-response...into another, the oratorio going chapter-and-verse through the wind-up of the stories I'd previously experienced directly.
What started as a five-star read ended at three and three-quarters because the narrative drive leaked right out, becoming severe with Mike's relating with the reader how Isaac fits in with the story. I began to nit-pick characters' word choices, their manner of addressing the facts they presented. That is never a good sign. I was disinvesting before the book ended.
But my goddesses, that first bit! A true joy of reading time spent well, and in the presence of a talented voice in storytelling. So not-quite four stars to celebrate the first novel of a writer whose next novel I want to read as soon as he writes it.
The Publisher Says: Inspired by the iconic punk scene of the late '70s, No Names blurs the lines of affection and sexuality in a haunting tale of desire, hope, and loss.
Mike and Pete were "no names," two working-class boys lost in the shuffle of their stratified town, brought together by their love of music. By 1978, their punk band was blazing across the underground scene. Now, in 1993, Mike is a hermit living alone on a dot of an island in the North Atlantic. When a mysterious letter from an unlikely fan named Isaac arrives, he's pulled right back into the pain he’s spent over a decade running from.
Isaac longs for an escape from his lonely teenage life. A chance discovery of the No Names’ only album catapults him into an obsession with the godlike rockers and the tantalizing possibility of connection.
As their stories collide, mistakes breed consequences that echo through the decades like the furious reverberations of a power chord.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Two-thirds of an excellent novel...after the twist, it's not excellent anymore. It's good, and as a contrast to almost two hundred pages of really outstanding build-up, I felt really let down by the ending. It was a messy trailing-off of several conversations, between characters and us, as well as each other. Multiple PoV novels are always...baggy...but this one's excitement and intensity came from the sense I had in the first part of the book that each person was picking up the thread of a narrative, was the response part in a call-and-response composition.
Much of that energy came from the way the voices wove around each other as they spoke of the times and events that the narrator before had no way of knowing. By the two-thirds mark, they were not telling the same story. They were following their own strands into a future not shared; it's like life, you meet, connect, intertwine for a time, then the time is over. The problem I had with that in this context is that it takes me from one kind of book...close harmony call-and-response...into another, the oratorio going chapter-and-verse through the wind-up of the stories I'd previously experienced directly.
What started as a five-star read ended at three and three-quarters because the narrative drive leaked right out, becoming severe with Mike's relating with the reader how Isaac fits in with the story. I began to nit-pick characters' word choices, their manner of addressing the facts they presented. That is never a good sign. I was disinvesting before the book ended.
But my goddesses, that first bit! A true joy of reading time spent well, and in the presence of a talented voice in storytelling. So not-quite four stars to celebrate the first novel of a writer whose next novel I want to read as soon as he writes it.
September 30, 2025
It was written really well, I just thought it was very depressing. Also, I've read some pretty graphic books and it doesn't always bother me.. but some of the details in this one kind of did (and I'm gay). I think some of the subject material also brought up past trauma. However, the writing was great. The plot was great, it was fun traveling with the characters. I just think at times it was stressful and felt hopeless and that left a bad taste in my mouth.
February 12, 2025
3.5. I will say for a first novel, I think it was good. The author has done poetry before, and it shows in a way. Some of the writing was choppy/blunt, but I overall enjoyed the story.
September 21, 2025
The second half of this book dragged. I just stopped caring and wanted it to end.
October 19, 2025
4.5/5 ⭐️
October 22, 2025
What an absolute mess of a book. Too much happening, too many people, too many weird ass choices. I honestly didn't care about anyone.
October 25, 2025
I am much gayer for having read this. (Complimentary)
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews