Wreck

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 *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 *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) *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” *Rocky is obsessed with a local train crash and her own undiagnosed illness in this honest, hilarious and heartbreaking follow-up to Sandwich. You’ll savour the prose from the very first line. * People *As protagonist Rocky reckons with a local tragedy, she learns that neither cyberchondria nor wit (and she’s hilarious) will prevent life’s progress. * Los Angeles Times *

Catherine Newman is the New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich and We All Want Impossible Things, which was also chosen for the Richard & Judy Book Club. She is also the author of the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, and the bestselling children’s book How to be a Person. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, Cup of Jo, and many other publications. She writes the Substack newsletter Crone Sandwich and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her family.