Description

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

ONE OF BBC’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2024

‘Hilarious, touching and hotly sublime’
JULIA ARMFIELD

‘Warm, witty and utterly idiosyncratic’
ALICE SLATER

‘Generous and tender’
NEW YORK TIMES

Siblings Greta and Valdin have, perhaps, too much in common. They’re flatmates, beholden to the same near-unpronounceable surname, and both make questionable choices when it comes to love.

Valdin is in love with his ex-boyfriend Xabi, who left the country because he thought he was making Valdin sad. Greta is in love with fellow English tutor Holly, who appears to be using her for admin support. But perhaps all is not lost. Valdin is coming to realize that he might not be so unlovable, and Greta, that she might be worth more than the papers she can mark.

Helping the siblings navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and the tendency of their love interests to flee, is the Vladisavljevic family: Maori-Russian-Catalonian, and as passionate as they are eccentric.

Rebecca K Reilly’s exploration of love, family, karaoke, and the generational reverberations of colonialism will make you laugh, cry, and fall for the whole Vladisavljevic bunch.

Publisher Review

Greta & Valdin is hilarious, touching and hotly sublime. The kind of novel that simultaneously makes me wish I were funnier and absolves me from the need to try - I'll never be as funny as Rebecca K Reilly (and that's ok) A big fat slice of joyful queer family life, peppered with messy breakups, bad dates and terrible decisions. You're gonna fall in love with the warm, witty and utterly idiosyncratic Greta & Valdin Greta & Valdin is one of the few genuinely funny books I've ever read. Totally delightful, psychologically astute, and dry as an astronaut's space cracker. It's like if Elif Batuman wrote Franny & Zooey, but gay. I want the whole thing as a lower back tattoo GRETA AND VALDIN feels somehow totally new and beautifully familiar at the same time, like the kind of book you've been longing to read your whole life. Part comedy of manners, part family epic and all contained within a compulsive, charming clutch of pages we couldn't put down. Both ruthless and hilarious, offering hope and a wink for queer romantics everywhere An absolute delight ... a gloriously picaresque celebration of messy, complicated love I laughed, I cried, I cheered with Greta and Valdin. This is a novel that tastes like life Heartwarmingly tender and raucously funny, with the sophistication of a Shakespearean comedy, Greta & Valdin is replete with swoonworthy queer romance, hilariously eccentric sibling hijinks and mature reckoning with the complexities of family heritage. A deliciously perfectly bittersweet delight As Greta and Valdin come into their own-helped by, and helping, the many weirdos in their lives-readers can root for only one outcome: If Reilly won't give us a sequel, then we can at least hope she won't make us wait too long for her next novel. Say hello to your new favorite fictional family. * Kirkus Reviews * THIS BOOK IS INCREDIBLE! I can't remember the last time I read something that was so genuinely and uniquely funny. Thank YOU for sending this wonderful book my way. I look forward to talking about it with everyone I know! I can't remember the last time I read a book that was as genuinely and uniquely funny as GRETA AND VALDIN. But it's also so much more than that. Reilly's voice is wise and full of life, and her observations about queer love, heartbreak, and the complexities of family are poignant without ever succumbing to sentimentality. This is a wholly original, laugh-until-you-ugly-cry-on-the-subway debut -- Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding