Spoilers for “Deep Cuts” by Holly Brickley ahead
Perhaps unbeknownst to the twenty-first-century reader, a “deep cut” is 90s-to-early-00’s slang for a lesser-known, rarely broadcast song by a popular artist. By that definition, Holly Brickley’s use of the phrase for her debut novel is both accurate and ironic.
“Deep Cuts” follows Percy, an avid music enthusiast, through her twenties as she navigates her career and her disastrous situationship with Joe, a musician who can’t seem to write without her help. While the novel itself is about how music influences society, it is by no means a “deep cut.”
Just two days after its debut, “Deep Cuts” was announced to be getting a feature film adaptation. What’s more, since its release back in February 2025, the novel has garnered around 40,000 reviews on Goodreads and has fallen under the radar of famous BookTubers like Haley Pham.
The sudden success of Brickley’s debut novel in an otherwise cutthroat literary industry, known to drown out the voices of new authors without an established media presence, begs the question: what made “Deep Cuts” succeed where so many others failed?
Brickley attributes it to a careful balance between the familiar and the niche.
“The novel has the kind of universal themes of love story and coming-of-age,” Brickley said in an interview with Annenberg Media. “But it is also set in the musical world in a way that was not quite done before—from an outsider’s perspective within the industry.”
Above all, “Deep Cuts” is a cross-genre literary work —“equal parts coming-of-age, love story, and love letter to music,” as Brickley describes it. As a reader, it is easy to observe that all the distinct themes of the novel combine under both the author’s and the protagonist’s love of music.
Playing homage to the MySpace era of music journalism, Brickley embeds elements of journalistic writing into certain chapters, presenting it as Percy’s own work. This idiosyncratic detail allows her emotional journey to be mirrored in her writing, no doubt alluding to the real ways our art shapes us as artists.
Brickley asserts that even Percy and Joe’s romantic relationship was in sync with their musical pursuits, choosing to pair the characters together in the end despite a decade of hostility and tension.
“I just wanted them to try because by that point in the book, their romance had become so enmeshed with their talent that I felt like for either of them to have a happy ending musically, they also had to have a happy ending romantically,” Brickley said.
I think it’s perfectly feminist to work with men and to love a man who has wronged you in the past, if you’ve found a way to forgive him.”
— Holly Brickley
Percy’s eventual reconnection with Joe could be seen as anti-feminist in the way a woman does not move on after a decade of partial disrespect and misery. But Brickley challenges that interpretation. “They hurt each other equally,” she explained. “Percy’s giving Joe a shot. I think it’s perfectly feminist to work with men and to love a man who has wronged you in the past, if you’ve found a way to forgive him.”
Despite all that, I think what truly distinguished Deep Cuts was its willingness to let its characters be deeply flawed, to the point that they failed repeatedly and unapologetically. Percy is not always likable; she cheats, lies, omits and acts opposite to what the common reader would want her to do. In every way possible, Brickley resists the idea that female characters must be palatable to be compelling.
In the novel, one of Percy’s friends, Zoey, tells her, “Just forgive yourself, it’s too exhausting not to.” Brickley, describing Percy, explains, “She’s a kid–she’s still figuring out how to set boundaries, how to express herself.”
In another life stage, perhaps Percy’s mistakes would feel less forgivable. But in her twenties, they feel inevitable. In a way, the author tells us women in our 20’s, which Holly Brickley describes as the Percys of the world, to let ourselves be imperfect.
Ironically, Percy, a character built to embody the rejection of expectation, was criticized in reviews, with one Goodreads reader going so far as to call her “insufferable.”
In opposition, Brickley adamantly stated that she never set out to appease an audience.
“I didn’t think about public opinion at all,” Brickley admitted. “I was kind of just writing it for my friends. Just to have anybody read it seemed like a dream.” Her freedom in writing without the weight of expectation is what probably allowed Percy to emerge as she did: fully realized, if imperfect.
More importantly than her relationship with Joe, Percy’s arc is defined by her relationship with her own talent.
Throughout the novel, there is an expectation that she will eventually step into the spotlight—that she will pursue the music career she envies Joe for. Instead, she gravitates toward something quieter.
“I wanted to pay tribute to her particular brand of talent,” Brickley said, “which is not the person who gets up on stage and gets all the glory.”
In a culture that often prioritizes visibility and individual success, Percy’s trajectory feels almost radical. She begins to embrace a behind-the-scenes role, one that reflects the reality of most creative industries. “People who do everything are pretty rare,” Brickley noted. “There are all sorts of other talents behind the scenes which go into what you’re seeing up there.”
Brickley wanted to write a character who chose her own passion and talent over the most mainstream, publicly accepted path. “I want people to talk more about why music moved them instead of just trying to impress each other with their preferences,” she said.
Her sentiment is echoed in one of the most striking lines within the novel, when Percy reimagines the meaning of a “deep cut”: “I personally like to pretend the phrase ‘deep cut’ has a totally different meaning, one that has nothing to do with anyone else’s opinion. How deep does it cut? How close to the bone? How long do you feel it?”
In a way, “Deep Cuts” is a manifesto for creative freedom. Or as Brickley puts it, quoting Georgia O’Keeffe: “I have already settled it for myself so criticism and praise go down the same drain, and I am quite free.”
In the end, Deep Cuts succeeds because it understands the complexity of what a novel should be. It is a story about music, yes, but also about the people who exist just outside the spotlight, shaping the art we consume in ways we rarely notice.
And like any true deep cut, Holly Brickley’s debut novel stays with you long after it’s over.