Greta  Valdin, Rebecca K Reilly
Greta  Valdin, Rebecca K Reilly
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
Club: $12.99

Greta & Valdin

Author: Rebecca K Reilly

Narrator: Natalie Beran, Jackson Bliss, Eilidh Beaton, Nico Evers-Swindell, Gary Furlong

Unabridged: 9 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/06/2024


Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST • A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR

“A heartfelt portrait of a complex family.” —People • “Laugh-out-loud-funny.” —Harper’s Bazaar • “Quintessential rom-com meets the delicious family sprawl of a Russian classic.” —Vanity Fair

The “brilliant” (Daily Mail, London) bestseller that follows a brother and sister as they navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and family drama, all while flailing their way to love—for fans of Schitt’s Creek and Sally Rooney’s Normal People.

It’s been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole Maaori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he’s sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he’s thrown back in his former lover’s orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings he’s been trying to ignore—and the future he wants.

Greta is not letting her painfully unrequited crush (or her possibly pointless master’s thesis, or her pathetic academic salary...) get her down. She would love to focus on the charming fellow grad student she meets at a party and her friendships with a circle of similarly floundering twenty-somethings, but her chaotic family life won’t stop intruding: her mother is keeping secrets, her nephew is having a gay crisis, and her brother has suddenly flown to South America without a word.

Filled with “kernels of humor and truth” (Elle) and with an undeniable emotional momentum that builds to an exuberant conclusion, Greta & Valdin careens us through the siblings’ misadventures and the messy dramas of their sprawling, eccentric Maaori-Russian-Catalonian family. An acclaimed bestseller in New Zealand, Greta & Valdin is fresh, joyful, and alive with the possibility of love in its many mystifying forms.

About Rebecca K Reilly

Rebecca K Reilly (Ngaati Hine, Ngaati Rehua Ngaatiwai ki Aotea), born 1991, is a Maaori novelist from Waitaakere, New Zealand. She has a BA (hons) in German and European studies from the University of Auckland and an MA from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, where she won the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing for 2019.


Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on April 08, 2024

i love a cool girl book. this book only has two flaws: it has 930 characters and all of them fall under the same family tree and 78% of their names start with G and two of them are greta and it is genuinely impossible to keep them straight even if you dramatically flip back to the beginning multiple......more

Goodreads review by Stacey on July 07, 2021

The author of the book seems like a GC. It's a good book in my opinion, and I like it that everyone is gay. I give it a nine out of nine Matariki stars.......more

Goodreads review by Claire on January 24, 2022

I could go on all day about this smart and funny debut novel. Reilly has written a rare beast, a contemporary New Zealand novel about early adulthood that is resonant, recognisable, and engaging. Tāmaki Makaurau is the living breathing heart of this story, brought to life in clever detail at every t......more

Goodreads review by elle on February 12, 2024

this was so funny and heartwarming and quirky (in a good way). rebecca reilly is obviously such a talented writer and i enjoyed reading this so much. i do wish that the story was more insular and centered a bit more around the siblings. near the end, i felt like there was too much going on and there......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on March 13, 2024

A cute and pleasant story about two queer siblings in New Zealand figuring out their love lives. I liked the thoughtful representation of OCD, the portrayal of a wholesome sibling dynamic, and some deeper commentary about how past generations affect the present. I didn’t love the story because I fou......more