Alice Sadie Celine

“The absence of commas in the title of Sarah Blakley-Cartwright’s richly intimate debut adult novel hints at the characters’ boundary-less enmeshment in one another’s lives… Wickedly delightful.” —THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Blakley-Cartwright’s stylish and quippy writing offers thoughtful commentary on the women’s many-faceted, much-entangled relationships, and how they’ve shaped, and been shaped by, one another.” —BOOKLIST “A heartfelt, smart, and keenly observed take on friendship and fulfillment, and what it means to start thinking of parents as actual people.” —TOWN & COUNTRY MAGAZINE “A lighthearted romp, tinged with melancholy, that gently pokes fun at sexual mores and those who defy them.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS “An elegant study of three women exploring their gender and sexuality… Packed with spiky insights. This satisfies the head and the heart.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY “Obsessed! Each sentence of Alice Sadie Celine is chock full of playful irreverence for feminist and gender theory, hip popular culture references, and the wide breadth of what defines female sexuality.” —Chloë Sevigny “I am literally obsessed.” —Busy Philipps, actress and New York Times bestselling author of This Will Only Hurt a Little “The three unforgettable women in this novel remind me of the dancing figures in the Matisse painting, their secrets joyful and mysterious, their dramas delightful and powerful. Delicious and subversive, Alice Sadie Celine is a mesmerizing read.” —Yiyun Li, winner of the PEN Jean Stein Award, PEN Hemingway Award, and author of The Book of Goose and Where Reasons End “Sarah Blakley-Cartwright subverts all kinds of expectations with this sharply drawn trio of strong-willed women. Vibrant, sensual, and full of irreverent humor, Alice, Sadie, Celine is an outstanding first novel.” —Idra Novey, author of Take What You Need “Alice Sadie Celine is the story of a forbidden love triangle, of the complexities of female friendship, and of the inextricable bond between mothers and daughters. Taut, tense, sexy, and lucid, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright’s debut adult novel is an unforgettable, irresistible, daring page-turner.” —Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of The Stars Are Not Yet Bells and Sonora “Like Didion but with more warmth and a queer sensibility, Alice Sadie Celine is packed with so much of what I love in a book: tight prose, smart, fully realized characters grappling with inappropriate love affairs, and bright California land and light. It’s extraordinarily lovely and I savored every word and didn’t want it to end.” —Bethany Ball, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Finalist and author of The Pessimists “Here come three indelible women and, with them, one of contemporary fiction’s most delicious love triangles. Sarah Blakley-Cartwright has written a gem of a novel – super smart, slyly sexy, and crackling throughout with kindhearted humor.” —Hermione Hoby, author of Virtue

Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is the author of Red Riding Hood, a #1 New York Times bestseller published worldwide in thirty-eight editions and fifteen languages. She is the editor of Hauser & Wirth’s The Artist’s Library for Ursula magazine. She is publishing director of the Chicago Review of Books, and associate editor of A Public Space.