Description

The NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, a wonderful novel full of laughter and heart, about marriage, family. and what happens when life doesn’t go as planned…

‘The kind of book that pulls up a chair, pours the wine, and dives deep… like spending hours with the friend who sees your mess and loves you more for it.’ ALISON ESPACH, author of The Wedding People

‘Hugely enjoyable, absolutely real and thoughtful…Newman has an Ephon-esque gift for blending the sharp and the sad and an ability to let us love her creations.’ Observer

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Rachel (Rocky) is seemingly living her best life as the irreverent, funny beating heart of her family. Her ageing father is his unique, adorable self; daughter Willa is prone to bouts of existential angst whilst berating the fact that her mother has zero filter; husband Nick is steady, logical, sometimes infuriating.

They are messy, they are flawed, they are completely, ridiculously normal.

And like most normal people, Rocky worries about what might happen next. So when a former classmate of her son Jamie dies in a seemingly random accident, Rocky becomes obsessed.

For if accidents can happen – and they do – is it truly safe to love anyone?

Fresh, honest, laugh out loud funny and genuinely relatable, WRECK follows Rocky and her family through one rollercoaster year as they negotiate the unpredictable and beautiful messiness of life.

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Readers say:

‘Wreck feels like Newman was writing directly to me. And what’s so impressive is, I think many, many, many readers will feel like it was just for them too.’

‘Feels like meeting up with old friends’

‘It’s like Catherine Newman knows exactly how I feel’

‘I feel seen every time I read [Catherine Newman’s] words’

‘There is just some kind of magic in Catherine Newman’s writing that makes me want to dog-ear every page’

Reviews say:

‘I LOVE her work… the antidote to these times’ MARIAN KEYES

‘Darkly funny, achingly emotional’ Woman & Home

‘Infectiously funny’ RACHEL JOYCE, author of The Homemade God

‘Insightful and totally relatable’ Good Housekeeping

‘The new queen of the bittersweet novel’ Independent

Publisher Review

Wreck is the kind of book that pulls up a chair, pours the wine, and dives deep-equal parts hilarious, sharp, and achingly sincere. It's like spending hours with the friend who sees your mess and loves you more for it. I didn't just read it-I felt known by it. A luminous, laugh-out-loud triumph by Newman. * Alison Espach, New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding People * I loved it! A gorgeously human, tender-hearted, and delightfully funny exploration of the anxieties that beset all of us, and the loving relationships and irrepressible joy that gets us through. * Nussaibah Younis, author of international bestseller Fundamentally * How comforting, how satisfying, and how delicious to be once again in the world of Rocky and her family where everyday life bangs against potential disaster and somehow muddles its way through. Infectiously funny and surprisingly moving, Wreck reminds us that we are each, in our way, trying to make sense of the big things with some very small tools - and that love in the end is the thing that saves us. * Rachel Joyce * Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines . . . . A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) * Endorsing a new Catherine Newman novel feels a bit like endorsing puppies or chocolate cake. It's a new Catherine Newman novel. Of course you want to read it. Wreck is a delight. What an absolute joy to be reunited with Rocky and her family, the characters we all fell in love with in Sandwich. Newman's prose is laugh-out-loud funny. It's also profound. I underlined so many passages in this treasure of a novel. It brought about that conundrum that the best books always do: I couldn't stop reading, even though I didn't want it to end. * J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Cliffs * Catherine Newman's new novel is a rare thing: both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply attuned to the quiet devastations of illness, grief, and family life. In Rocky, a woman mourning her mother's death while grappling with her own changing health, Newman gives us a narrator whose fierce intelligence and generous heart make even the most ordinary moments shimmer with grace. * Meghan O'Rourke, New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Kingdom * Catherine Newman has my heart . . . . Newman is my dream writer, and she channels the perfect cocktail of humanity into her characters, especially Rocky. Rocky is funny and dry and emotional and sometimes crazy and always loving, so loving, of her family, even as she struggles and panics. It's a gift to get to be on the quest with her, and learn alongside her, about how to be alive, to be a person, to be good, to be worthy. * Lithub (Most Anticipated Books) * Utterly joyful. * Oprah Daily, "25 Best Books of Fall 2025" *