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Wimmy Road Boyz
three boyz drive & dream
of an impossible night
on an endless street...
a white bimmer hurtles down manchester’s curry mile, carrying three brown boys in pursuit of a wild night out, oi oi oi!
there’s IMMY (22) – nursing mad heartbreak but tryna get over it by chirpsing someone new, hoping to distract from the scores of rage bubbling up beneath...
there’s KHAN (23) – cambridge-gangster on a mission to avenge, losing himself to old stereotypes, illegal ventures on the sly...
and there’s HARIS (23) – the sensitive type, getting married next week but having second thoughts, feeling mad para about his day ones discovering all his secrets.
it’s an evening of chaos and mischief. three boys with nothing to do and something to prove. of course there’s gonna be trouble.
and look, what the boys don’t know: this night might just be their last...
WIMMY ROAD BOYZ is a blistering story of masculinity, violence and love set over the course of a single, surreal night from a wholly original new British talent.
of an impossible night
on an endless street...
a white bimmer hurtles down manchester’s curry mile, carrying three brown boys in pursuit of a wild night out, oi oi oi!
there’s IMMY (22) – nursing mad heartbreak but tryna get over it by chirpsing someone new, hoping to distract from the scores of rage bubbling up beneath...
there’s KHAN (23) – cambridge-gangster on a mission to avenge, losing himself to old stereotypes, illegal ventures on the sly...
and there’s HARIS (23) – the sensitive type, getting married next week but having second thoughts, feeling mad para about his day ones discovering all his secrets.
it’s an evening of chaos and mischief. three boys with nothing to do and something to prove. of course there’s gonna be trouble.
and look, what the boys don’t know: this night might just be their last...
WIMMY ROAD BOYZ is a blistering story of masculinity, violence and love set over the course of a single, surreal night from a wholly original new British talent.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published May 28, 2026
About the author
Sufiyaan Salam
3 books13 followersSufiyaan Salam is a writer and former animator from Blackburn. He’s working on several TV & feature projects, and co-wrote the short film MAGID / ZAFAR, premiering in 2025. Wimmy Road Boyz, winner of the #Merky Books New Writers’ prize, is his first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
October 30, 2025
OK NGL
I ATE WITH THIS ONE
🚗🚗🚗💨💨💨
I ATE WITH THIS ONE
🚗🚗🚗💨💨💨
April 17, 2026
whewww i am way too fragile for this rn. heartbreakingly beautiful and yet i’m laughing through my tears. so different from anything i’ve ever read
— more collected thoughts
upcoming from @merkybooks - something very, very special
when people talk about how men have it hard and they talk about boys that have been vilified and left behind, they are, of course, often talking about largely privileged white men. the various traumas and pains the characters of Wimmy Road Boyz have experienced could be argued to be universal, yet their specific cultural context — young men of Pakistani descent who grew up in northern England — throws these issues into greater relief
with hyper-intimate perspectives of his three main characters and brief deviations through a wider cast, the author paints a vivid and powerful portrait of what it is to be young and Brown in britain
questions of masculinity, shame, identity, community, power, love, and truth are tackled in a way that never feels heavy handed. each boy is in turmoil, wrestling with an inner darkness he can barely face let alone share, and these rise to the surface throughout the course of one night
naturally, this book goes to some dark places, yet it made me laugh aloud time and time again. the voices are raw and messy (and strikingly real) but the author’s prose is precise. just stunning writing throughout
a magnificent novel, one i hope to see a lot of people talking about, and i hope a lot of teenagers and young people read this
#merkybooks #scottishbookstagrammer #publishing
— more collected thoughts
upcoming from @merkybooks - something very, very special
when people talk about how men have it hard and they talk about boys that have been vilified and left behind, they are, of course, often talking about largely privileged white men. the various traumas and pains the characters of Wimmy Road Boyz have experienced could be argued to be universal, yet their specific cultural context — young men of Pakistani descent who grew up in northern England — throws these issues into greater relief
with hyper-intimate perspectives of his three main characters and brief deviations through a wider cast, the author paints a vivid and powerful portrait of what it is to be young and Brown in britain
questions of masculinity, shame, identity, community, power, love, and truth are tackled in a way that never feels heavy handed. each boy is in turmoil, wrestling with an inner darkness he can barely face let alone share, and these rise to the surface throughout the course of one night
naturally, this book goes to some dark places, yet it made me laugh aloud time and time again. the voices are raw and messy (and strikingly real) but the author’s prose is precise. just stunning writing throughout
a magnificent novel, one i hope to see a lot of people talking about, and i hope a lot of teenagers and young people read this
#merkybooks #scottishbookstagrammer #publishing
May 3, 2026
just phenomenal — and i’m not using that word lightly. unlike anything i’ve ever read, i won’t be surprised if this is on the booker longlist this year
January 9, 2026
BURSTING WITH ENERGY!
I laughed, I cried and I paused so many times, in awe of how incredible each sentence is - devouring it, like a 1kg box of the freshest, hottest and stickiest jalebi. What an incredible story of friendship, family, masculinity and vulnerability (and so much more!!!!) And oh, how Sufiyaan captures the vibrancy and chaotic energy of the Curry Mile!
I laughed, I cried and I paused so many times, in awe of how incredible each sentence is - devouring it, like a 1kg box of the freshest, hottest and stickiest jalebi. What an incredible story of friendship, family, masculinity and vulnerability (and so much more!!!!) And oh, how Sufiyaan captures the vibrancy and chaotic energy of the Curry Mile!
June 1, 2026
Nah - the hype is strong here.
Positives:
- Vivid
- Nice and contemporary - makes a refreshing change to hear accurate dialogue. As a result it comes across as natural, getting you closer to the characters.
- Often effective in terms of drama, tension and giving the feeling of being wrapped up in a crazy night.
- A solid attempt - kudos to him for breaking through and his next book will undoubtedly bang.
Negatives:
- The insistence on attempting poetic and lyrical language grates. Bit open mic-ish after a while. The literary devices are sometimes obvious and stiff, so much that the fact I kept noticing them on every page, detracting from the story, rather than being an integral part. Alliteration - check. Similes - check etc
- The pacing is all over the place. So slow in places that you'll be praying for it to end or at least speed up. Then superfast in the last 50 pages where the story finally gets active.
- For a similar reason, it could have been 50-80 pages shorter.
Positives:
- Vivid
- Nice and contemporary - makes a refreshing change to hear accurate dialogue. As a result it comes across as natural, getting you closer to the characters.
- Often effective in terms of drama, tension and giving the feeling of being wrapped up in a crazy night.
- A solid attempt - kudos to him for breaking through and his next book will undoubtedly bang.
Negatives:
- The insistence on attempting poetic and lyrical language grates. Bit open mic-ish after a while. The literary devices are sometimes obvious and stiff, so much that the fact I kept noticing them on every page, detracting from the story, rather than being an integral part. Alliteration - check. Similes - check etc
- The pacing is all over the place. So slow in places that you'll be praying for it to end or at least speed up. Then superfast in the last 50 pages where the story finally gets active.
- For a similar reason, it could have been 50-80 pages shorter.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Absolutely unreal. Salam is such a cutting new voice on the writing scene who isn't afraid to play with plot, form and his readers' hearts. All the comeraderie and real-life complexity of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting with a cultural anchor at its core, this book hit me like a freight train. I expect to see this book on the bestseller lists next year.
April 28, 2026
this is absolutely incredible and everyone should read this. Sufiyaan Salam has burst onto the scene with this utterly captivating debut and i am in love with every word.
following the story of three Manchester boys through their last night driving up and down the curry mile, the reader is taken on a whirlwind journey into each boy’s life and all their demons.
the most impactful thing about this book is the style. my colleague told me that Salam had said that he never wanted to write a boring sentence like ‘he sat down’ and that immediately made the writing so much more interesting to read. it was poetically structured at points before spinning off into beautiful prose - never over-flowered or over explained, but perfectly done. i love when a writer forgoes standard English rules - i.e capital letters etc - as it gives the narrative a completely different feel, in this case, making it much more conversational and realistic. he is funny, full of incredible wit and his words overflow with colour and emotion. genuinely some epic writing.
the characters of Immy, Khan and Haris were so individually unique and incredibly developed, each had their own voice and personality in my head, their backstories winding through years and years of life, unsaid but seen in between each line on the page. each story made your heartbreak, with Immy as the ringleader of the three. when i started reading this book, i said to myself ‘these boys are going to make cry, aren’t they?’. i was not wrong.
i laughed out loud, i felt their pain deep in my soul, the beauty of their friendship that speaks to all of us. and man, that ending. what a way to break me.
an absolutely fantastic novel, could not recommend this enough. thank you to the publishers (and my work!) for my proof copy of this moving and exciting book, which comes out 28th of May. don’t miss it!!
following the story of three Manchester boys through their last night driving up and down the curry mile, the reader is taken on a whirlwind journey into each boy’s life and all their demons.
the most impactful thing about this book is the style. my colleague told me that Salam had said that he never wanted to write a boring sentence like ‘he sat down’ and that immediately made the writing so much more interesting to read. it was poetically structured at points before spinning off into beautiful prose - never over-flowered or over explained, but perfectly done. i love when a writer forgoes standard English rules - i.e capital letters etc - as it gives the narrative a completely different feel, in this case, making it much more conversational and realistic. he is funny, full of incredible wit and his words overflow with colour and emotion. genuinely some epic writing.
the characters of Immy, Khan and Haris were so individually unique and incredibly developed, each had their own voice and personality in my head, their backstories winding through years and years of life, unsaid but seen in between each line on the page. each story made your heartbreak, with Immy as the ringleader of the three. when i started reading this book, i said to myself ‘these boys are going to make cry, aren’t they?’. i was not wrong.
i laughed out loud, i felt their pain deep in my soul, the beauty of their friendship that speaks to all of us. and man, that ending. what a way to break me.
an absolutely fantastic novel, could not recommend this enough. thank you to the publishers (and my work!) for my proof copy of this moving and exciting book, which comes out 28th of May. don’t miss it!!
July 15, 2026
There is a scene towards the end of Wimmy Road Boyz where one of the characters finally says, "I'll tell you everything." It struck me that this simple sentence was really what the novel had been moving towards all along. Not the kidnapping. Not the violence. Not even the heartbreak. The real story is about what happens when men finally find the courage to tell the truth.
This book is ostensibly about three British Pakistani friends driving around Manchester's Curry Mile over the course of a single night before one of them gets married. It has all the ingredients of a familiar coming-of-age story, fast cars, late-night cafés, romance, drugs, bravado and bad decisions. But very quickly it becomes apparent that this is merely the stage on which a far more intimate drama unfolds. Every mile travelled on Wimmy Road is also a journey into memory, identity and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
What I liked most about this book is its interrogation of masculinity. The main characters, Immy, Khan and Haris all begin the night performing versions of manhood they imagine the world expects of them. One hides behind humour and reckless flirtation, another behind the allure of power and criminality, while the third retreats into silence and dutiful obedience. They appear very different, yet they are united by one thing, which is that none of them knows how to speak honestly about pain.
We often speak of toxic masculinity as though it is simply aggression or domination. In this book, Sufiyaan Salam suggests something more nuanced. Toxic masculinity is also emotional illiteracy. It is the inability to grieve openly, to admit fear without shame, to ask for help before anger becomes the only language left. The violence in the novel is real, but what interested me more was the silence that precedes it. Again and again, the men fail one another not because they do not care, but because they have never learned how to care out loud.
This is, ultimately, a novel about friendship. There is something profoundly moving about watching these three men slowly realise that the people they have spent years laughing with are also the people before whom they are most afraid to be vulnerable. Their banter, insults and performances of toughness are not signs of emotional closeness but substitutes for it. The book's emotional climax is therefore not found in acts of heroism or revenge, but in conversations that should have happened years earlier. Healing begins the moment performance ends.
The question of identity runs through every page. Haris's struggle between faith, sexuality, family expectations and artistic expression is perhaps the most obvious, but all three protagonists inhabit multiple identities that resist easy categorisation. They are British without ceasing to be Pakistani; Muslim without being reducible to religion; young men shaped as much by Manchester as by inherited memories of migration and Partition. The book wisely resists offering neat resolutions. Identity here is not something one arrives at but something one continues to negotiate.
I also appreciated the way the novel quietly broadens its moral universe. The "Take Back the Night" march running through the latter part of the book serves as a reminder that the men's emotional journeys exist alongside the realities faced by women navigating violence, fear and public space. Likewise, the revelation about Pakeeza reframes what initially appears to be a conventional story of romantic heartbreak into something far more painful and ethically complex. It asks uncomfortable questions about trauma, helplessness and the limits of love when confronted with violence that cannot be undone.
One of the novel's quieter pleasures is its conversation with Farid ud-Din Attar's The Conference of the Birds. The allusion is never forced, and readers unfamiliar with Attar's poem can enjoy the novel without recognising it. Yet for those who do, the recurring image of the hoopoe becomes a beautiful thread running beneath the narrative. In Attar's poem, the birds search the world for a king, only to discover that the journey has really been towards self-knowledge. Salam's three protagonists undertake a similar pilgrimage. Each begins the night searching for something external, love, power, certainty, acceptance, only to discover that what they have been avoiding is themselves. The destination is not another place but another way of seeing.
I found myself thinking, too, about the significance of setting. Curry Mile is not simply a location but a living archive of migration, memory and belonging. The restaurants, shisha cafés and familiar streets become a geography of the diaspora, where inherited histories meet contemporary Britain in all its contradictions. The book captures this world with affection but without nostalgia, allowing it to remain messy, funny, vibrant and painfully human.
For a debut novel, Wimmy Road Boyz is remarkably ambitious. Its shifting perspectives, linguistic inventiveness and non-linear structure demand patience, but they also reflect the fragmented nature of memory itself. The story refuses to move in a straight line because healing rarely does.
In the end, what I admired most was the novel's quiet insistence that redemption begins not with certainty but with confession. We spend much of our lives constructing identities that we hope will protect us from rejection. Salam reminds us that these performances often become prisons of our own making. The courage his characters eventually discover is not the courage to fight, but the courage to be known.
Beneath the book’s energy, humour and cultural specificity lies a profoundly universal truth, that we are all, in one way or another, searching for a place where we can finally tell our story and trust that someone will remain to listen.
This book is ostensibly about three British Pakistani friends driving around Manchester's Curry Mile over the course of a single night before one of them gets married. It has all the ingredients of a familiar coming-of-age story, fast cars, late-night cafés, romance, drugs, bravado and bad decisions. But very quickly it becomes apparent that this is merely the stage on which a far more intimate drama unfolds. Every mile travelled on Wimmy Road is also a journey into memory, identity and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
What I liked most about this book is its interrogation of masculinity. The main characters, Immy, Khan and Haris all begin the night performing versions of manhood they imagine the world expects of them. One hides behind humour and reckless flirtation, another behind the allure of power and criminality, while the third retreats into silence and dutiful obedience. They appear very different, yet they are united by one thing, which is that none of them knows how to speak honestly about pain.
We often speak of toxic masculinity as though it is simply aggression or domination. In this book, Sufiyaan Salam suggests something more nuanced. Toxic masculinity is also emotional illiteracy. It is the inability to grieve openly, to admit fear without shame, to ask for help before anger becomes the only language left. The violence in the novel is real, but what interested me more was the silence that precedes it. Again and again, the men fail one another not because they do not care, but because they have never learned how to care out loud.
This is, ultimately, a novel about friendship. There is something profoundly moving about watching these three men slowly realise that the people they have spent years laughing with are also the people before whom they are most afraid to be vulnerable. Their banter, insults and performances of toughness are not signs of emotional closeness but substitutes for it. The book's emotional climax is therefore not found in acts of heroism or revenge, but in conversations that should have happened years earlier. Healing begins the moment performance ends.
The question of identity runs through every page. Haris's struggle between faith, sexuality, family expectations and artistic expression is perhaps the most obvious, but all three protagonists inhabit multiple identities that resist easy categorisation. They are British without ceasing to be Pakistani; Muslim without being reducible to religion; young men shaped as much by Manchester as by inherited memories of migration and Partition. The book wisely resists offering neat resolutions. Identity here is not something one arrives at but something one continues to negotiate.
I also appreciated the way the novel quietly broadens its moral universe. The "Take Back the Night" march running through the latter part of the book serves as a reminder that the men's emotional journeys exist alongside the realities faced by women navigating violence, fear and public space. Likewise, the revelation about Pakeeza reframes what initially appears to be a conventional story of romantic heartbreak into something far more painful and ethically complex. It asks uncomfortable questions about trauma, helplessness and the limits of love when confronted with violence that cannot be undone.
One of the novel's quieter pleasures is its conversation with Farid ud-Din Attar's The Conference of the Birds. The allusion is never forced, and readers unfamiliar with Attar's poem can enjoy the novel without recognising it. Yet for those who do, the recurring image of the hoopoe becomes a beautiful thread running beneath the narrative. In Attar's poem, the birds search the world for a king, only to discover that the journey has really been towards self-knowledge. Salam's three protagonists undertake a similar pilgrimage. Each begins the night searching for something external, love, power, certainty, acceptance, only to discover that what they have been avoiding is themselves. The destination is not another place but another way of seeing.
I found myself thinking, too, about the significance of setting. Curry Mile is not simply a location but a living archive of migration, memory and belonging. The restaurants, shisha cafés and familiar streets become a geography of the diaspora, where inherited histories meet contemporary Britain in all its contradictions. The book captures this world with affection but without nostalgia, allowing it to remain messy, funny, vibrant and painfully human.
For a debut novel, Wimmy Road Boyz is remarkably ambitious. Its shifting perspectives, linguistic inventiveness and non-linear structure demand patience, but they also reflect the fragmented nature of memory itself. The story refuses to move in a straight line because healing rarely does.
In the end, what I admired most was the novel's quiet insistence that redemption begins not with certainty but with confession. We spend much of our lives constructing identities that we hope will protect us from rejection. Salam reminds us that these performances often become prisons of our own making. The courage his characters eventually discover is not the courage to fight, but the courage to be known.
Beneath the book’s energy, humour and cultural specificity lies a profoundly universal truth, that we are all, in one way or another, searching for a place where we can finally tell our story and trust that someone will remain to listen.
November 24, 2025
Highly recommend. Wimmy road boyz is originally comical, exhilarating and disturbing - making it incredibly fun to read. All while managing to find wholly new ways of hitting you in the gut.
May 7, 2026
Read in a hospital room haze and my neck hurts from being hunched over the screen. So rich and vibrant.
June 26, 2026
Writing this review, currently sobbing, haven’t stopped sobbing for the last hour.
I have rated this book 5 stars which I don’t think I have for any book yet, I can only urge people to go and pick this up and have a read.
I’m trying to gather some of my thoughts together lol - so I thought the book was absolute genius I was crying with laughter at points then actually crying then laughing again. I loved the writing, shifting from prose to script to poetry, words literally darting around the page and never knowing what’s next, it made the book feel electric. I couldn’t put it down.
Immy, Khan and Haris, you just want them to be happy and I felt so protective over them and their feelings. In the book you get to submerge into their feelings - vulnerability, anger, love, fear, revenge, all wrapped up in complicated notions of relationships, religion, sexuality and masculinity.
Sufiyaan Salam has made a book so current and exciting and fresh and devastating and I think everyone should give it a read, especially if you are a young guy. Wow, what a debut absolute legend you are Sufiyaan you are right, you ate with this one🔥🔥
Also that last chapter wtf if I think about it I’ll keep crying lol
I have rated this book 5 stars which I don’t think I have for any book yet, I can only urge people to go and pick this up and have a read.
I’m trying to gather some of my thoughts together lol - so I thought the book was absolute genius I was crying with laughter at points then actually crying then laughing again. I loved the writing, shifting from prose to script to poetry, words literally darting around the page and never knowing what’s next, it made the book feel electric. I couldn’t put it down.
Immy, Khan and Haris, you just want them to be happy and I felt so protective over them and their feelings. In the book you get to submerge into their feelings - vulnerability, anger, love, fear, revenge, all wrapped up in complicated notions of relationships, religion, sexuality and masculinity.
Sufiyaan Salam has made a book so current and exciting and fresh and devastating and I think everyone should give it a read, especially if you are a young guy. Wow, what a debut absolute legend you are Sufiyaan you are right, you ate with this one🔥🔥
Also that last chapter wtf if I think about it I’ll keep crying lol
June 22, 2026
i am so on the fence about this more so on the representation of muslims as a practising muslim myself. it left me frustrated but served as an eye opener. GRAHHGG for once i'd love to see muslims actually believing what they preach bcuz this religion IS beautiful and kind and i'd like it to be taken seriously for once.
floored with the mention of middlesbrough and preston/uclan like i lived there! what! pakistanis are so integral to the UK and i appreciate seeing them on paper. seeing how these boys speak, think and act is so REAL as someone who went to school with boys like these in the north oh my days.
floored with the mention of middlesbrough and preston/uclan like i lived there! what! pakistanis are so integral to the UK and i appreciate seeing them on paper. seeing how these boys speak, think and act is so REAL as someone who went to school with boys like these in the north oh my days.
April 23, 2026
4.5 stars
Phew. What a beautiful, human and heartbreaking book. As someone who has grown up around boys like Immy, Khan and Haris, their voices lifted from the page and became very real, very quickly. The writing style took a little to get used to, but added to the overall character of the story. I could tell from the beginning that the book was racing head first towards a disaster, but it still took me by surprise.
Salam has a way of writing that balances humour, trauma and anger all at once. These boys felt real, their unprocessed emotions and trauma were incredibly powerful as was their friendship. A beautiful and immensely impressive debut, serving as a nod to human emotion and masculinity.
(Also, big up Manny rep!!! The references to the north and Manchester were so brilliant).
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for kindly providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. #WimmyRoadBoyz #NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Phew. What a beautiful, human and heartbreaking book. As someone who has grown up around boys like Immy, Khan and Haris, their voices lifted from the page and became very real, very quickly. The writing style took a little to get used to, but added to the overall character of the story. I could tell from the beginning that the book was racing head first towards a disaster, but it still took me by surprise.
Salam has a way of writing that balances humour, trauma and anger all at once. These boys felt real, their unprocessed emotions and trauma were incredibly powerful as was their friendship. A beautiful and immensely impressive debut, serving as a nod to human emotion and masculinity.
(Also, big up Manny rep!!! The references to the north and Manchester were so brilliant).
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for kindly providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. #WimmyRoadBoyz #NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
May 22, 2026
Shakespeare’s sweating rn
July 8, 2026
This book is unlike any I've ever read - bursting at the seams with energy and vitality! A really interesting and surprisingly tender portrayal of masculinity, friendship and vulnerability (amongst many other things!) Would be really intrigued to see what he writes next!
At first I found the concurrent mix of poetic prose and authentic dialogue a bit jarring, but as the book progressed I understood the intention behind it.
Also - THAT ENDING (no spoilers) - beautiful and heart-wrenching. Would highly recommend!
At first I found the concurrent mix of poetic prose and authentic dialogue a bit jarring, but as the book progressed I understood the intention behind it.
Also - THAT ENDING (no spoilers) - beautiful and heart-wrenching. Would highly recommend!
June 20, 2026
finished like 200 pages in a day, stayed up till 1am on a friday night to finish, phenomenal time was had fr - laughed, cried and was genuinely so moved. felt like genuine representation of the boys i grew up with that I've never seen before and wasn't just caricaturising them, will also be reflecting on the traumas of growing up as a working class fruity northern brown muslim kid while I go to sleep tonight but also rerunning through some insane prose in my mind, so beautifully written! this is rambling and work was very long today so I am now going to sleep <3
June 6, 2026
Cried so much at how these boys failed themselves and how the world failed them and yet how they loved the world and loved each other regardless. I laughed, I cried, I journaled for an entire page about how much I wanted to kill one of the characters. I looked my own male rage in the face and loved her. So beautiful. I love manchester i wish it was real
July 8, 2026
This kept me on my toes. I enjoyed the pace near the end of the book and where loose ends were tied up, it was a heartbreaking ending that I really didn’t see coming! The pace from the get go however was off and I felt like I was waiting for the end to a spoken word performance, I got lost in the prose and not in a good way. Would be keen to read the author’s next project!
June 12, 2026
“Wimmy Road Boyz" ist sehr energetisch und fesselnd. Salam schreibt in einem modernen, experimentellen Stil, der für mich sehr erfrischend war. Stellenweise ist das Buch auch poetisch. Die Geschichte der drei jungen Männer ist berührend und zugleich cool. Es ist schön, Literatur aus der eigenen Generation zu lesen und sie nachempfinden zu können. Salam schafft es, die Charaktere einzigartig und empathisch aufzubauen. Die Entwicklung des Abends und das Voranschreiten der Geschichte offenbaren immer neue Geheimnisse und Wendungen. Es ist unerwartet, roh, ehrlich, poetisch und einzigartig. Für mich ein sehr schönes Buch, das moderne Kultur und Männlichkeit mit Literatur verknüpft - eine zeitlose Aufnahme unseres Zeitgeistes.
June 19, 2026
Truly one of the best books I’ve ever ever read. I laughed aloud multiple times, cried, and wallowed in the delicious, exciting, electric language. I’m sad that it’s over, and feel privileged to have read it. 100% BANGER 💥
July 7, 2026
Don’t often write reviews but reading this, I remembered once in Year 7 English I got in trouble for writing my story with ‘slang’. Anyway, reading this story and old memories of Manchester/ the curry mile in uni, this will stay with me.
July 9, 2026
Best bit was definitely the last 100 pages - felt a bit lost at the start but perhaps that’s part of the charm and it’s a me problem that I couldn’t follow? An inventive and poetic writing style that was quite unique which I enjoyed (and it referenced Stockport pyramid)
June 11, 2026
Completely mesmerising, like being on a runaway train, not knowing when or how it was going to stop, only understanding at some point it had to.
July 13, 2026
This was ever so good! A bit Trainspotting in the use of language, a twist (or maybe it was just me) and entertaining.
Did Not Finish
June 12, 2026Dnf at 4% - I had to stop at the COUSIN SEX like 10 pages in😕 I bet my ex would really relate to this book🥰
June 24, 2026
How out of hand can a night out in Manchester’s curry mike really get?
Put it together with trauma, secrets, heartache, agnosticism, belief, jealousy, anger, good times, unpaid debts, and a whole lot of ganj filled pineapple tins and you have The Wimmy Road Boyz
This was so fresh, written in a beautifully lyrical prose with colloquialisms woven in like the icing on a cake.
These 3 lads will stick with me for a very very long time. Completely heartbreaking. Achingly funny and mad deeps fam.
Put it together with trauma, secrets, heartache, agnosticism, belief, jealousy, anger, good times, unpaid debts, and a whole lot of ganj filled pineapple tins and you have The Wimmy Road Boyz
This was so fresh, written in a beautifully lyrical prose with colloquialisms woven in like the icing on a cake.
These 3 lads will stick with me for a very very long time. Completely heartbreaking. Achingly funny and mad deeps fam.
July 5, 2026
3.5. Ambitious, unique but doesn’t fully stick the landing. Rounded up because Preston is mentioned (RAHHHH).
I have been meaning to write a review of this since I finished it but it’s been a hectic week.
This book throws A LOT at the wall with its prose; some of it worked really well for me and some of it didn’t. However, I can’t fault an author for having a distinct voice in their novel, even if it didn’t click with me perfectly. The book does a good job of representing being young and from the North West through its characters; these characters felt like people I had grown up and known at college. The three boys didn’t always feel distinct in their personal voice, but that may be because the novel jumped between them at times.
The book chooses deliberately to take on a lot of themes all at once, and it sometimes struggles to juggle them all and get the story where it needs to go. There were certainly sections in the middle that dragged a bit, but when you really dive into Immy’s story in the last third it really grew on me. Overall, I enjoyed the novel, and it was refreshing to see North West represented in a novel in a way that feels familiar to me, but I can’t help feeling it bit off more than it could chew sometimes.
I have been meaning to write a review of this since I finished it but it’s been a hectic week.
This book throws A LOT at the wall with its prose; some of it worked really well for me and some of it didn’t. However, I can’t fault an author for having a distinct voice in their novel, even if it didn’t click with me perfectly. The book does a good job of representing being young and from the North West through its characters; these characters felt like people I had grown up and known at college. The three boys didn’t always feel distinct in their personal voice, but that may be because the novel jumped between them at times.
The book chooses deliberately to take on a lot of themes all at once, and it sometimes struggles to juggle them all and get the story where it needs to go. There were certainly sections in the middle that dragged a bit, but when you really dive into Immy’s story in the last third it really grew on me. Overall, I enjoyed the novel, and it was refreshing to see North West represented in a novel in a way that feels familiar to me, but I can’t help feeling it bit off more than it could chew sometimes.
July 4, 2026
Returned from my strike of goodreads to rate this book. If I had a million stars, I would rate it that. Incredible, heartbreaking. It destroyed me. But such a joy to read ❤️❤️ I'm still processing
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June 14, 2026So, so beautiful - really strong work on masculinity, friendships, different types of loyalty and how we need to break these for some that are more important and just. Cannot believe this is a debut.
Also: listened on audio and wowwwwww! So immersive.
Also: listened on audio and wowwwwww! So immersive.
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