Deep Cuts

A Novel

By: Holly Brickley

Narrated by: Jayme Mattler

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Tender as a ballad and pleasurable as a pop song, Deep Cuts is both a romp into the indie sleaze era of the early aughts and a timeless love story.”—Coco Mellors, New York Times bestselling author of Blue Sisters

“Warm, nostalgic, totally engrossing. I loved this novel.”—Liz Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The God of the Woods

Look, the song whispered to me, that day in my living room. Life can be so big.

It’s a Friday night in a campus bar in Berkeley, fall of 2000, and Percy Marks is pontificating about music again. Hall and Oates is on the jukebox, and Percy—who has no talent for music, just lots of opinions about it—can’t stop herself from overanalyzing the song, indulging what she knows to be her most annoying habit. But something is different tonight. The guy beside her at the bar, fellow student Joe Morrow, is a songwriter. And he could listen to Percy talk all night.

Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs—and the results kick off a partnership that will span years, ignite new passions in them both, and crush their egos again and again. Is their collaboration worth its cost? Or is it holding Percy back from finding her own voice?

Moving from Brooklyn bars to San Francisco dance floors, Deep Cuts examines the nature of talent, obsession, belonging, and above all, our need to be heard.

©2025 Holly Brickley (P)2025 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“It’s perhaps inevitable that Holly Brickley’s Deep Cuts will be likened to other noteworthy (feeble pun intended) books that incorporate music—most recently Daisy Jones and the Six, possibly High Fidelity, etc. But being compared favorably to previous bestsellers isn’t the only thing that makes Deep Cuts stand out, although it certainly doesn’t hurt. . . . What could have been a straight-up romance turns into something far more interesting.”—The Minnesota Star Tribune

“This dazzling debut isn’t so much a ‘will they/won’t they’ story as it is a ‘should they?’ With an assured, conversational tone, appealing characters, and an emotionally resonant love story, this one is sure to win the hearts of many readers.”—Booklist, starred review

“A promising debut notable for sharp characterizations and a vividly conveyed sense of time and place.”—Kirkus Reviews

Great Story will be a awesome Movie

Very indicative of the times….Holly Brickley is a very talented writer….the reader was very enjoyable

A melomaniac’s dream

A novel full of music, youth and everything 20-somethings go through. It’s actually a great debut, enjoyed it very much.

A Perfect Playlist for Growing Up

This book starts with the slightly cringe angst so many of us felt starting out in college at the beginning of the century - needy to prove ourselves. Then it unfolds, layer after layer, digging deeper, taking new perspectives, telling us things about ourselves while the narrator remembers discovering them for the first time. This story is a reflection on what it means to live and to forgive and to find one's place in a world that is constantly struggling to find it's own identity right along with us. And through the entire story, a complex and varied, personal and beautiful Playlist provides an array of lenses to view it all through. Like growing and the best songs - it's messy and painful and beautiful all at once. I loved it.