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Cherry Beach
We arrived on a Tuesday, I can remember that. I can remember Hetty’s hand in mine as we moved slowly down the steps of the escalator, as if standing completely still would have been harder than moving.
Hetty and Ness, best friends since childhood, have left suburban Melbourne for the first time to live abroad. Hetty is charming and captivating, the life of the party. Ness is a wallflower, hopelessly in love with her. In the student quarter of Toronto, the pair take a room in a share house full of self-assured creatives. Hetty disappears into barkeeping work and a whirlwind nightlife, while Ness drifts aimlessly.
But when Ness finds Hope one day in the art gallery, an intense affair develops. There are new friends, too, and a job: at last her life starts to make some sense. And Hetty’s starts spectacularly to fall apart, in a mess of bad drugs and bad men.
As winter freezes the lakeside city, the dark undercurrents of Hetty’s character—abusive relationships, a dangerous obsession with bodies of water—become ever stronger. Ness may lose the person she loves more than anyone else in the world.
Beautifully written and intimate, Cherry Beach is a revelatory story of friendship and desire.
Hetty and Ness, best friends since childhood, have left suburban Melbourne for the first time to live abroad. Hetty is charming and captivating, the life of the party. Ness is a wallflower, hopelessly in love with her. In the student quarter of Toronto, the pair take a room in a share house full of self-assured creatives. Hetty disappears into barkeeping work and a whirlwind nightlife, while Ness drifts aimlessly.
But when Ness finds Hope one day in the art gallery, an intense affair develops. There are new friends, too, and a job: at last her life starts to make some sense. And Hetty’s starts spectacularly to fall apart, in a mess of bad drugs and bad men.
As winter freezes the lakeside city, the dark undercurrents of Hetty’s character—abusive relationships, a dangerous obsession with bodies of water—become ever stronger. Ness may lose the person she loves more than anyone else in the world.
Beautifully written and intimate, Cherry Beach is a revelatory story of friendship and desire.
240 pages, Paperback
First published February 4, 2020
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9218 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 352 reviews
January 15, 2020
This is a beautiful story about friendship and love and death. McPhee-Browne captures the excitement and uncertainty of youth perfectly. The complexity of female friendships is piercingly written - the way that Hetty's horrible ex-boyfriend sees right through Ness' adoration felt dreadfully real. As the story unfolds, the writing gets more and more vivid, especially in the way that bodies and embodied feelings are described - it's almost physical writing that still manages to maintain Ness' slightly childlike voice. It's readable and moving - sad and sexy. A fantastic debut.
January 5, 2020
A beautiful, aching, impressionistic novel; awash in sensory detail and small but weighted moments of emotional significance.
October 31, 2022
Oh wow. This book!!! I loved loved loved it - definitely secured a spot as one of my faves! I could’ve devoured it in one sitting but I had to try and stretch it for as long as I could - I almost wanted to flip the book over and start it all again when I finished reading it.
As I get older, I start to notice how my taste in books seem to change. It’s now landed in that sweet spot where the books I cherish the most aren’t necessarily action-packed - they’re usually on the quiet side where the plot is slower, but filled with characters that really stay with you for a long time. Cherry Beach is exactly this and I’m so glad to have found it.
Laura’s writing is absolutely fantastic and i just knew from page 1 that I would fall heads over heels in love with the book. You really find yourself connecting with Ness and her reserved, yet almost desperate love and adoration she has for Hetty.
I love how Laura talks to sexuality and its fluidity, which can be rare to find, and I love how she manages to make each character so complex and vivid, regardless of how big or small of a role they have. I have to admit that I fell hard for Faith who is so kind and delightful and perfect.
It’s always a bonus for me when books are set locally - although the majority of the book is set in Canada, both Ness and Hetty are from Melbourne. I could almost feel myself being in the places they used to spend their time in when they were younger.
If you want a book that’s beautiful, captivating, tender AND has been described as ‘queer Normal People’ - then I cannot recommend it highly enough! 🍒💫
As I get older, I start to notice how my taste in books seem to change. It’s now landed in that sweet spot where the books I cherish the most aren’t necessarily action-packed - they’re usually on the quiet side where the plot is slower, but filled with characters that really stay with you for a long time. Cherry Beach is exactly this and I’m so glad to have found it.
Laura’s writing is absolutely fantastic and i just knew from page 1 that I would fall heads over heels in love with the book. You really find yourself connecting with Ness and her reserved, yet almost desperate love and adoration she has for Hetty.
I love how Laura talks to sexuality and its fluidity, which can be rare to find, and I love how she manages to make each character so complex and vivid, regardless of how big or small of a role they have. I have to admit that I fell hard for Faith who is so kind and delightful and perfect.
It’s always a bonus for me when books are set locally - although the majority of the book is set in Canada, both Ness and Hetty are from Melbourne. I could almost feel myself being in the places they used to spend their time in when they were younger.
If you want a book that’s beautiful, captivating, tender AND has been described as ‘queer Normal People’ - then I cannot recommend it highly enough! 🍒💫
September 20, 2020
Depressing and very slow paced. Practically nothing significant happened for the first half of the book. The main character was being so self-deprecating and aimless. Her whole world spun around her best friend and yet she couldn't see what was right in front of her eyes and take some action.
February 5, 2020
In her debut novel Cherry Beach, McPhee-Browne has drawn an intimate portrait of a close friendship between young women, which will leave you aching. In a short number of pages, she has spun a rich emotional landscape anchored in moments of intense physicality. Readers should note triggers for suicide, psychotic episodes, and allusions to domestic violence and emotional and sexual abuse, as well as drug use.
Melburnians Ness and Hetty fulfil a teenage promise to move to the other side of the world together, "to become better, more alive versions of ourselves." They end up in Toronto, where Ness falls in love and begins to flourish, while Hetty seems to simply fall and fade. Cherry Beach explores the evolution and devolution of their friendship with startling intimacy.
While Ness is the first person narrator, this novel is really about Hetty. Beautiful, magnetic, yet casual and sometimes careless Hetty, around whom everyone seems to orbit. Most, if not all, female friendships have some degree of this dynamic, but McPhee-Browne has drawn it to an extreme, somewhat blinding Ness to the downsides of Hetty's life. Ness has other flaws, though, and these threaten the romance that blossoms when she meets the delightful Faith in an art gallery. Their relationship brings such joy to the tale (one of my favourite moments sees them hoping to encounter Margaret Atwood in a Korean supermarket) that helps balance the darker moments.
Very few minor characters are fully developed, and while this would usually be a critique, it actually adds authenticity to this story. Ness is so absorbed by Hetty and Faith in turn, that she does not notice much about the other people in her life, and so neither do we, as readers. Instead, we mostly see incomplete sketches of the housemates in Toronto, as well as Hetty's new friends. McPhee-Browne knows them all better though - she peels back the superficial facade for one minor character towards the very end as proof.
Cherry Beach is about so many things, but above all it is a story about coming to know oneself, and the tenderness of friendship. McPhee-Browne perfectly captures the intimacy of female friendship, the interdependence and lean of it, heightened by Ness and Hetty being away from home. I doubt any woman who has had a best friend can read this and fail to relate.
This is an easy book to fall into. The writing is fluid and clear, and words never feel wasted, much in the style of Jennifer Down. McPhee-Browne captures small details that give deep insight into both character and place, a la Sally Rooney. Her writing also has a regular connection to the senses and sensation; these are fleeting moments in the narrative, yet add an important layer to the story.
A small thing, but I also enjoyed the chapters having names - something that seems to have fallen out of favour in literary novels lately. They helped me narrow in on the core of McPhee-Browne's main message or impression on each chapter, while providing links back to the water of the prologue.
Cherry Beach is an impressive debut that I would hope to see on the Stella - and potentially the Women's - Prize longlist as a striking example of Australian women portrayed in fiction.
Recommended if you liked: Our Magic Hour
I received a review copy of Cherry Beach from Text Publishing in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Melburnians Ness and Hetty fulfil a teenage promise to move to the other side of the world together, "to become better, more alive versions of ourselves." They end up in Toronto, where Ness falls in love and begins to flourish, while Hetty seems to simply fall and fade. Cherry Beach explores the evolution and devolution of their friendship with startling intimacy.
While Ness is the first person narrator, this novel is really about Hetty. Beautiful, magnetic, yet casual and sometimes careless Hetty, around whom everyone seems to orbit. Most, if not all, female friendships have some degree of this dynamic, but McPhee-Browne has drawn it to an extreme, somewhat blinding Ness to the downsides of Hetty's life. Ness has other flaws, though, and these threaten the romance that blossoms when she meets the delightful Faith in an art gallery. Their relationship brings such joy to the tale (one of my favourite moments sees them hoping to encounter Margaret Atwood in a Korean supermarket) that helps balance the darker moments.
Very few minor characters are fully developed, and while this would usually be a critique, it actually adds authenticity to this story. Ness is so absorbed by Hetty and Faith in turn, that she does not notice much about the other people in her life, and so neither do we, as readers. Instead, we mostly see incomplete sketches of the housemates in Toronto, as well as Hetty's new friends. McPhee-Browne knows them all better though - she peels back the superficial facade for one minor character towards the very end as proof.
Cherry Beach is about so many things, but above all it is a story about coming to know oneself, and the tenderness of friendship. McPhee-Browne perfectly captures the intimacy of female friendship, the interdependence and lean of it, heightened by Ness and Hetty being away from home. I doubt any woman who has had a best friend can read this and fail to relate.
This is an easy book to fall into. The writing is fluid and clear, and words never feel wasted, much in the style of Jennifer Down. McPhee-Browne captures small details that give deep insight into both character and place, a la Sally Rooney. Her writing also has a regular connection to the senses and sensation; these are fleeting moments in the narrative, yet add an important layer to the story.
A small thing, but I also enjoyed the chapters having names - something that seems to have fallen out of favour in literary novels lately. They helped me narrow in on the core of McPhee-Browne's main message or impression on each chapter, while providing links back to the water of the prologue.
Cherry Beach is an impressive debut that I would hope to see on the Stella - and potentially the Women's - Prize longlist as a striking example of Australian women portrayed in fiction.
Recommended if you liked: Our Magic Hour
I received a review copy of Cherry Beach from Text Publishing in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
March 14, 2020
3.5 stars. Reread the beginning straight after the end and wished it was longer. But in all it felt:
captivating - underwhelming - captivating again. I wanted to know more of what happened to Hetty, and less about the recurring passive nature of Ness.
captivating - underwhelming - captivating again. I wanted to know more of what happened to Hetty, and less about the recurring passive nature of Ness.
Read
January 8, 2021The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of Cherry Beach
'Cherry Beach is a tender and bruising coming-of-age novel. McPhee-Browne’s writing is both poetic and economical, finely attuned to the exhilaration and doom of youth, unfamiliar cities and new relationships.’
Jennifer Down
‘Laura McPhee-Browne’s Cherry Beach is an acute and gripping novel about being made and unmade by first love. In prose reminiscent of Elizabeth Jolley’s, McPhee-Browne portrays the helpless entanglement of two friends in their impossible quest for self-determination. Cherry Beach is a breathtaking debut by a gifted new voice in Australian fiction.’
Ellena Savage
‘A melancholy exploration of mental health, female friendship and desire, delicately portraying the deep ache of losing the person you’re closest to…A promising debut.'
Books+Publishing
‘Like sparkling wine on a sunny afternoon, Cherry Beach goes down easily—and leaves a killer hangover. A vibrant, tender debut from a bright new voice in Australian fiction. I loved every minute of it.’
Laura Elizabeth Woollett
'This beautiful novel is tender: tender like a loving touch, and tender like a bruise. Cherry Beach will seduce you with its lush and gorgeous detail and its unguarded openness, and then it will rip your heart out. In its rawness and its yearning, Cherry Beach exquisitely captures the intensity of youth, love, desire, and loss.’
Emily Bitto
'If you liked Sally Rooney’s Normal People but were left hankering for something local, queer, and (possibly) darker, Cherry Beach may do the trick...A tender, intimate story that will leave its mark.'
Readings
'The debut of Melbourne-based Laura McPhee-Browne is a poetic, languid, melancholic and sensitive meditation on trying to carve your own path in that liminal period between the freedom of childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood.’
Age
‘McPhee-Browne’s writing is tender, bruising, sexy and heartbreaking in equal measure…Cherry Beach has the pace of a thriller despite urging the reader to linger over the exquisite details of young desire, capturing the intensity of youth with refined restraint.’
Adelaide Review
'Cherry Beach is the kind of story that bruises…A beautiful, heartfelt book.'
Kill Your Darlings
‘The book deftly captures the experiences that define youth: love, desire, loss, ambiguity. There is a vulnerability and rawness to McPhee-Browne’s writing that many will compare to Sally Rooney and that is completely warranted. This is a really impressive debut!’
WellRead
‘Cherry Beach has been called a queer Normal People, but this simplifies its multifaceted and nuanced layering of meaning…Through its exploration of queer actualisation, of the transformative nature of the friendship and love in our lives, of, the inevitably beautiful-scary, Cherry Beach succeeds.’
Lifted Brow
‘Its power lies in the intimate moments between lifelong friends Ness and Hetty…Readers feel the full force of the relationship between these two women: an inescapable bond coloured by unrequited desire.’
Broadsheet
‘A beautiful and compulsively readable novel about friendship and desire.’
Alice Cottrell, Kill Your Darlings
'Cherry Beach is a tender and bruising coming-of-age novel. McPhee-Browne’s writing is both poetic and economical, finely attuned to the exhilaration and doom of youth, unfamiliar cities and new relationships.’
Jennifer Down
‘Laura McPhee-Browne’s Cherry Beach is an acute and gripping novel about being made and unmade by first love. In prose reminiscent of Elizabeth Jolley’s, McPhee-Browne portrays the helpless entanglement of two friends in their impossible quest for self-determination. Cherry Beach is a breathtaking debut by a gifted new voice in Australian fiction.’
Ellena Savage
‘A melancholy exploration of mental health, female friendship and desire, delicately portraying the deep ache of losing the person you’re closest to…A promising debut.'
Books+Publishing
‘Like sparkling wine on a sunny afternoon, Cherry Beach goes down easily—and leaves a killer hangover. A vibrant, tender debut from a bright new voice in Australian fiction. I loved every minute of it.’
Laura Elizabeth Woollett
'This beautiful novel is tender: tender like a loving touch, and tender like a bruise. Cherry Beach will seduce you with its lush and gorgeous detail and its unguarded openness, and then it will rip your heart out. In its rawness and its yearning, Cherry Beach exquisitely captures the intensity of youth, love, desire, and loss.’
Emily Bitto
'If you liked Sally Rooney’s Normal People but were left hankering for something local, queer, and (possibly) darker, Cherry Beach may do the trick...A tender, intimate story that will leave its mark.'
Readings
'The debut of Melbourne-based Laura McPhee-Browne is a poetic, languid, melancholic and sensitive meditation on trying to carve your own path in that liminal period between the freedom of childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood.’
Age
‘McPhee-Browne’s writing is tender, bruising, sexy and heartbreaking in equal measure…Cherry Beach has the pace of a thriller despite urging the reader to linger over the exquisite details of young desire, capturing the intensity of youth with refined restraint.’
Adelaide Review
'Cherry Beach is the kind of story that bruises…A beautiful, heartfelt book.'
Kill Your Darlings
‘The book deftly captures the experiences that define youth: love, desire, loss, ambiguity. There is a vulnerability and rawness to McPhee-Browne’s writing that many will compare to Sally Rooney and that is completely warranted. This is a really impressive debut!’
WellRead
‘Cherry Beach has been called a queer Normal People, but this simplifies its multifaceted and nuanced layering of meaning…Through its exploration of queer actualisation, of the transformative nature of the friendship and love in our lives, of, the inevitably beautiful-scary, Cherry Beach succeeds.’
Lifted Brow
‘Its power lies in the intimate moments between lifelong friends Ness and Hetty…Readers feel the full force of the relationship between these two women: an inescapable bond coloured by unrequited desire.’
Broadsheet
‘A beautiful and compulsively readable novel about friendship and desire.’
Alice Cottrell, Kill Your Darlings
February 24, 2020
This debut novel is beautifully tender and sexy, sketching a portrait of queer love and loss between two childhood friends. We follow Ness and Hetty as they move from Melbourne to Toronto. Ness
grapples with her feelings for Hetty, as Hetty loses herself in this strange new place. There is a lot of difficult subject matter here, but it's told with such gentle grace that the reader
always feels safe. Although the emotional climax felt in hindsight obvious, it still caught me by surprise and devastated me. Both Melbourne and Toronto feel so vivid, and the recurring theme of water provides a quiet heartbeat throughout. What a lovely, tragic thing this is. I adored it.
grapples with her feelings for Hetty, as Hetty loses herself in this strange new place. There is a lot of difficult subject matter here, but it's told with such gentle grace that the reader
always feels safe. Although the emotional climax felt in hindsight obvious, it still caught me by surprise and devastated me. Both Melbourne and Toronto feel so vivid, and the recurring theme of water provides a quiet heartbeat throughout. What a lovely, tragic thing this is. I adored it.
April 17, 2020
3 freaking weeks to read 200 pages! This book single-handedly made me reluctant to even open a book for the last 3 weeks. This was okay but this was certainly not enjoyable to read.
It was okay because the writing is not bad, the author is apt at weaving past and present and at making emotions come through the writing. But this was unrelentingly depressing. At some point, a character says that the best friend is like a character in a sad indie movie. And well, this book was exactly like a sad indie movie. It was a depressing book more than anything but even when it was depicting supposedly happy or tender moments, it was actually being a sad indie movie.
And let's not talk about the main character and narrator, who is just doing nothing to change her depressing mindset (not that she appears to suffer from depression, she just seems self-deprecating, and super hung up on her best friend and letting her be the guiding force in her life in an unhealthy way for all involved) and to help her very obviously ill best friend. Not that it feels like they are best friends, given the amount of time that they don't spend together, and that we're told they haven't been spending together for the last years; and the amount of not communicating that is happening and has been happening for years.
It was okay because the writing is not bad, the author is apt at weaving past and present and at making emotions come through the writing. But this was unrelentingly depressing. At some point, a character says that the best friend is like a character in a sad indie movie. And well, this book was exactly like a sad indie movie. It was a depressing book more than anything but even when it was depicting supposedly happy or tender moments, it was actually being a sad indie movie.
And let's not talk about the main character and narrator, who is just doing nothing to change her depressing mindset (not that she appears to suffer from depression, she just seems self-deprecating, and super hung up on her best friend and letting her be the guiding force in her life in an unhealthy way for all involved) and to help her very obviously ill best friend. Not that it feels like they are best friends, given the amount of time that they don't spend together, and that we're told they haven't been spending together for the last years; and the amount of not communicating that is happening and has been happening for years.
March 9, 2020
Beautiful debut by this Melbourne female author. I won't lie, I came for the cover and stayed for the story!! Beautiful story about friendship with no frills and none of that trying too hard language often seen in first Australian novels. I loved the dynamics and character developments woven throuhgout this story, as well as the bold efforts to expose dark points that millennial female friendships tend to unravel to in modern society. Very much recommend for a getaway read on a rainy day or holiday! Loved it
May 18, 2020
3.5 stars !! I did enjoy this, but I wanted more. It felt like something was missing. It didn’t read like a debut which was nice, and the writing was lovely, told in a gentle, soft, beautiful kind of way that I liked which was probably why I gave it that extra .5 stars.
October 23, 2023
still great, just had to check
May 1, 2020
I'm bad at keeping up to date with new releases. But when I opened two different articles about this book up on separate occasions on the same day I knew I would have to purchase it.
"There are blanks, these days, between the light. I almost like the way I don't seem to have to deal with the whole of anything anymore" (2).
I drank this book up in a mere two hours. Drunk on the gorgeous cover by Emma Currie and entranced by Laura McPhee-Browne's words. 'Cherry Beach' is so easy to slip into, every sentence ringing with truth and emotion.
'Cherry Beach' is a novel of the changes that flow through us, especially as young adults. Readers become Ness, discovering herself in Toronta, Canada, after moving there with her best friend Hetty. You're wrapped up in stories of sexuality and growth. What happens when you can't help someone? What happens when you can't help yourself?
"I suppose I was in love with her, but I tried to pretend it didn't matter, and I succeeded, mostly" (56).
I identified deeply with Ness and in places with Hetty, too. Struggling against different waves of trauma and mental illness, whilst trying to retain a sense of self when your love is overwhelming. I just feel this, and the reminders that all forms of grief for all forms of people is valid. I can't quite put my finger on the feeling.
There is something so special about this book and Laura McPhee-Browne has done extraordinary work. All I can think about is how I want to go forward in this landscape of queer culture, love, lust and loss. We learn., like the characters, the expansiveness of life, the corners and curves and where waters meet. It's truly captivating.
"She was trying to find the sea" (174).
"There are blanks, these days, between the light. I almost like the way I don't seem to have to deal with the whole of anything anymore" (2).
I drank this book up in a mere two hours. Drunk on the gorgeous cover by Emma Currie and entranced by Laura McPhee-Browne's words. 'Cherry Beach' is so easy to slip into, every sentence ringing with truth and emotion.
'Cherry Beach' is a novel of the changes that flow through us, especially as young adults. Readers become Ness, discovering herself in Toronta, Canada, after moving there with her best friend Hetty. You're wrapped up in stories of sexuality and growth. What happens when you can't help someone? What happens when you can't help yourself?
"I suppose I was in love with her, but I tried to pretend it didn't matter, and I succeeded, mostly" (56).
I identified deeply with Ness and in places with Hetty, too. Struggling against different waves of trauma and mental illness, whilst trying to retain a sense of self when your love is overwhelming. I just feel this, and the reminders that all forms of grief for all forms of people is valid. I can't quite put my finger on the feeling.
There is something so special about this book and Laura McPhee-Browne has done extraordinary work. All I can think about is how I want to go forward in this landscape of queer culture, love, lust and loss. We learn., like the characters, the expansiveness of life, the corners and curves and where waters meet. It's truly captivating.
"She was trying to find the sea" (174).
December 5, 2024
“I’ve never lived somewhere where people cared for each other so much, and concentrated earnestly on the best things about being young and alive. Hetty had always been my window into this sort of thing, even though sometimes her eyes clouded over and she couldn’t see much at all.”
Cherry Beach follows childhood best friends, Ness and Hetty, who have just moved to Toronto from suburban Melbourne. They keep a tight hold of one another in the beginning out of necessity and shared history. However, coming into a bigger unexplored world with someone you've held so closely to you comes with changing tides – ones that threaten to pull you apart from one another no matter how tightly you try to hold on. As the tides change with a new life, a new home, and new people, old traumas can bubble up and rise to the surface until your person is beyond accepting help.
Laura McPhee-Browne's writing induced a physical reaction from me that I can only compare to getting tipsy. Her writing is so intoxicating, its warmth seeping into your blood with every description of Toronto from a foreigner’s eyes to the characters, each so loud and dimensional even for just a brief moment. This is easily one of my favourites in a while and I'll be adding McPhee-Browne's writing style to my list of authors who I will be taking inspiration from for my own writing.
edit (dec 5, 2024): i’ve read this book 3 times now - almost every year of my twenties. this time around it felt the most like a story i needed to come across again. this time hurt the most, and i’m so grateful for it. i’m not sure what else i can say. bad books are easier to write about. good books are a feeling.
Cherry Beach follows childhood best friends, Ness and Hetty, who have just moved to Toronto from suburban Melbourne. They keep a tight hold of one another in the beginning out of necessity and shared history. However, coming into a bigger unexplored world with someone you've held so closely to you comes with changing tides – ones that threaten to pull you apart from one another no matter how tightly you try to hold on. As the tides change with a new life, a new home, and new people, old traumas can bubble up and rise to the surface until your person is beyond accepting help.
Laura McPhee-Browne's writing induced a physical reaction from me that I can only compare to getting tipsy. Her writing is so intoxicating, its warmth seeping into your blood with every description of Toronto from a foreigner’s eyes to the characters, each so loud and dimensional even for just a brief moment. This is easily one of my favourites in a while and I'll be adding McPhee-Browne's writing style to my list of authors who I will be taking inspiration from for my own writing.
edit (dec 5, 2024): i’ve read this book 3 times now - almost every year of my twenties. this time around it felt the most like a story i needed to come across again. this time hurt the most, and i’m so grateful for it. i’m not sure what else i can say. bad books are easier to write about. good books are a feeling.
February 27, 2022
Book hangover, potentially due to:
A) the intimate, emotional complexities of this novel
B) it being (mostly) set to the backdrop of my teen years/early 20s
C) the exploration of grief
D) my recent fondness of water and the way it’s been mirrored in this novel
E) all of the above
Very character driven, both a sweet and sour depiction of what it means to be queer and experience all of life’s highs and lows.
I really enjoyed this and felt like I was right there with Ness. Wish we could have felt a deeper connection to some of the side characters though.
A) the intimate, emotional complexities of this novel
B) it being (mostly) set to the backdrop of my teen years/early 20s
C) the exploration of grief
D) my recent fondness of water and the way it’s been mirrored in this novel
E) all of the above
Very character driven, both a sweet and sour depiction of what it means to be queer and experience all of life’s highs and lows.
I really enjoyed this and felt like I was right there with Ness. Wish we could have felt a deeper connection to some of the side characters though.
July 28, 2023
I loved the writing in this. And I largely enjoyed the reading experience, which felt intimate and vulnerable, getting to know Ness and her relationships with Hetty and Faith in particular. Also the descriptions of Toronto were lush.
However, I can’t say this one swept me away. Ness is passive, self-deprecating and in love with the idea of Hetty (I say idea, because I’m not convinced she actually knew Hetty all that well, despite their supposed closeness). And as a result, everything just happens to her, rather than her really doing anything, which was frustrating to read. I didn’t enjoy the idealisation of Hetty, which read very MPDG (which the text did even nod to at one point, but it didn’t feel subversive at all) and is more dehumanising than romantic. I also don’t love the implication that what happens was inevitable, or that it’s not possible to help someone in a mental health crisis.
However, I can’t say this one swept me away. Ness is passive, self-deprecating and in love with the idea of Hetty (I say idea, because I’m not convinced she actually knew Hetty all that well, despite their supposed closeness). And as a result, everything just happens to her, rather than her really doing anything, which was frustrating to read. I didn’t enjoy the idealisation of Hetty, which read very MPDG (which the text did even nod to at one point, but it didn’t feel subversive at all) and is more dehumanising than romantic. I also don’t love the implication that what happens was inevitable, or that it’s not possible to help someone in a mental health crisis.
Read
June 13, 2020This was perceptive and vulnerable and went places I wasn’t expecting (which I won’t mention because spoilers). On a personal note, it was the first novel I’ve read partially set in the suburbs I grew up in and it made me nostalgic for when I was a teenager like Hetty and Ness, also swimming at Warrandyte River or killing time at Eastland Shopping Centre. Cherry Beach is a beautiful debut and I can’t wait to read more from Laura McPhee-Browne.
March 31, 2020
Hard to believe this is a debut, but McPhee-Browne has given us a novel that will leave you aching. Rich in detail and emotionally heart-wrenching, Cherry Beach is an intimate portrait of the closeness of female friendship, the devastation of unrequited love, the pain of mental illness and the vulnerability of first love. The narrative perfectly captures the intensity of youth, and the feeling that love is supposed to overcome all things and last forever. Until it doesn't.
Reading this made me angry and despondent, truly this is a novel that will stay with me for some time.
Trigger warnings: suicide, psychotic episodes, and allusions to domestic violence and emotional and sexual abuse, as well as drug use.
Reading this made me angry and despondent, truly this is a novel that will stay with me for some time.
Trigger warnings: suicide, psychotic episodes, and allusions to domestic violence and emotional and sexual abuse, as well as drug use.
December 14, 2023
A very well written debut novel about two young women and long term friends who leave their homes in Melbourne to travel, live and work in Toronto Canada. The novel captures the uncertainty and excitement of this Australian rite of passage, although more often, at least in my day, London was the destination. The relationship between Hetty and Ness, both in the present and in the flashbacks, is very well portrayed. There is joy and sadness, pain and growth. The settings were well drawn - and I don't think this was as a consequence of my knowledge of both places but rather the author's abilities. I really look forward to see what Laura McPhee-Browne offers us next. And an aside - what spectacular cover art.
February 12, 2020
A beautiful, lyrical book about the messiness and complexity of female friendship, mental illness and grief. I loved the Canadian setting (one of the characters even shares my Margaret Atwood obsession). The story really captures that strange, isolated, free feeling you have when you're in another country.
April 13, 2020
Beautiful, moving, heartbreaking and profound. Rooney vibes. Highly recommend.
February 6, 2020
I’m not very good at reviews. But I read a lot of books and this was very very good and I finished it in two sittings. Well done Laura! ❤️
February 16, 2020
Lush, dreamy, aching; I suspect any woman who has had and lost a beautiful best friend will feel this to their core. I enjoyed exploring Toronto - a city I’ve never seen - while also revisiting my old adolescent stomping grounds of Warrandyte and Kangaroo Ground; this contrast of the unknown and the familiar is also reflected in the push/pull relationship between Ness and Hetty. I found Cherry Beach very reminiscent of Jennifer Down’s writing, which I also love.
April 15, 2020
This book is indeed as tender as others have described it, but also brutal and heartbreaking. The writing is superb. Had I known how sad it becomes, I probably wouldn't have read it right now, but the prose was so engaging that I couldn't stop until the very end. Poor Hetty, poor Ness.
July 7, 2020
4.5 stars.
Oof. Heartbreaking and beautiful.
Oof. Heartbreaking and beautiful.
February 24, 2020
Intense, vivid, and so queer. Loved every moment with this book, will likely pick up everything McPhee-Browne writes after this
February 28, 2020
Perfect. As if Sarah Winman and Sally Rooney got together to write a book just for me.
February 27, 2020
3.5 Stars ✨
Enjoyed this book but it felt very short. A different style to my usual but I think it was effective. I just felt like something was missing though but overall, a good read.
Enjoyed this book but it felt very short. A different style to my usual but I think it was effective. I just felt like something was missing though but overall, a good read.
February 13, 2022
Good but kind of boring... maybe I'm just burnt out.
April 17, 2020
I came to Cherry Beach via the PaperCuts podcast—cheers, girls. Gill H, Tessa G, Kath B, Tash: you'll like this one.
Cherry Beach is not my usual style of read, but I was thoroughly tempted by the premise of Hetty and Ness's uneven friendship: Hetty is magnetic, glamorous, damaged. Ness is clumsy, loyal, queer.
McPhee-Browne's writing is deliciously spare yet intimate. Cheery Beach is a dark coming of age story that drew me in and had me reading late into the night. A fantastic debut.
Fav quotes:
I didn’t have siblings—just a worn-out mother and a silent father—and I was lonely. I sometimes wonder if Hetty had sensed from that first day how much I needed her.
Hetty and I had made a sort of pact when we were sixteen that we would travel together to the other side of the world one day and live there for as long as we could brave it, in order to become better, more alive versions of ourselves.
I sat down on a bench in the middle of nowhere—tall thin fresh trees standing all around, and a damp forest floor —and had a little cry. I was glad I was there, in High Park, in Toronto. It wasn’t that. It was just hard sometimes to keep smiling, to keep moving and looking and trying, when you sensed you were being left behind.
Maybe I was burnt out from Sean, from the years of holding Hetty together when a man had pulled her apart.
I would always have to share Hetty with these friends she would make throughout life who rubbed up against her and pulled her up and down. I couldn’t change it.
I didn’t want someone to feel bad because I was unable to keep myself inside my skin. I was spilling out around myself and making people uncomfortable, and to realise it made my face feel hot and red.
It’s like she’s always on her way somewhere but she’s not really sure where she’s going.
There was no tattoo—just a few small freckles and the surface of her.
She got to know people quickly, or at least the surface of them. People made her their best friend in minutes, and she never told them she was taken.
Hetty has moved through me like water since Toronto.
Cherry Beach is not my usual style of read, but I was thoroughly tempted by the premise of Hetty and Ness's uneven friendship: Hetty is magnetic, glamorous, damaged. Ness is clumsy, loyal, queer.
McPhee-Browne's writing is deliciously spare yet intimate. Cheery Beach is a dark coming of age story that drew me in and had me reading late into the night. A fantastic debut.
Fav quotes:
I didn’t have siblings—just a worn-out mother and a silent father—and I was lonely. I sometimes wonder if Hetty had sensed from that first day how much I needed her.
Hetty and I had made a sort of pact when we were sixteen that we would travel together to the other side of the world one day and live there for as long as we could brave it, in order to become better, more alive versions of ourselves.
I sat down on a bench in the middle of nowhere—tall thin fresh trees standing all around, and a damp forest floor —and had a little cry. I was glad I was there, in High Park, in Toronto. It wasn’t that. It was just hard sometimes to keep smiling, to keep moving and looking and trying, when you sensed you were being left behind.
Maybe I was burnt out from Sean, from the years of holding Hetty together when a man had pulled her apart.
I would always have to share Hetty with these friends she would make throughout life who rubbed up against her and pulled her up and down. I couldn’t change it.
I didn’t want someone to feel bad because I was unable to keep myself inside my skin. I was spilling out around myself and making people uncomfortable, and to realise it made my face feel hot and red.
It’s like she’s always on her way somewhere but she’s not really sure where she’s going.
There was no tattoo—just a few small freckles and the surface of her.
She got to know people quickly, or at least the surface of them. People made her their best friend in minutes, and she never told them she was taken.
Hetty has moved through me like water since Toronto.
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