I finished this, last night, and it was one of the finest pieces of writing I’ve read in a long while! The tale is enthralling and emotional but it goes so much deeper than this! I honestly cannot recommend this enough and Evie Wyld is fast becoming one of my auto-buy authors!

DNF - I'm not sure what part of this book didn't work for me but I found my mind wandering as I read it & couldn't motivate myself to continue. I am interested to see what else this author gets up to.

This is deceptively simple novel, describes the relationship between Max and Hannah and the secrets in her past. It’s no spoiler to say that Max is a ghost, who is trying to protect Hannah as she processes her grief from losing him. Hannah’s backstory and childhood is truly harrowing at times and her family history shows how she’s had to deal with the ‘echoes’ from her past. The authors writing is excellent and not a word is wasted or out of place. I will be looking forward to reading the authors next novel. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this novel in return for an honest review.

Hannah, an Australian woman, lives in a flat with her boyfriend Max. When Max dies, he finds he remains in the flat as a ghost. The novel switches between ‘Before’, Max and Hannah’s relationship before his demise; ‘After’, Hannah’s grief; and ‘Then’ which takes us back to Hannah’s life in Australia.
The Echoes is a powerful novel, beautifully written, covering a number of heavy themes in a warm, unique way.

This novel was masterfully written. Flickering between the perspectives of before then and now, the reader is taken through the life, or rather afterlife, of a ghost who is trapped in his flat that he previously inhabited with his girlfriend. The novel is carried through with a rather dark and mournful tone, and yet I couldn't help but also sense a bit of hope as I was reading. Perhaps that indicates a deeper meaning to this novel: the beauty in life after death, and what it truly means to continue living without our loved ones physically beside us.

At its core, Wyld created such an intimate narrative that deals with grief and loss, and the way in which this 'echoes' through our life for eternity. Grief never goes silent, we just lean into the noise and gently grasp at whatever whispers we can retrieve of our loved ones.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House UK, Vintage for the e-ARC

Ooof. I’m a fan of Evie Wyld’s books and was really looking forward to The Echoes, and I’m happy to say it delivered in all the ways I expected. There’s a proliferation of books and movies that examine the ripple effects of trauma, and while that can become fatiguing, I’ve found myself in a position in the past year where grief, memory, family, trauma and echoes of the past have become an important part of everyday life.

Evie Wyld’s storytelling is often touched by darkness, without moving into horror tropes. In The Echoes, we move between several key players, including Max — a ghost who remains in the home he shared with his girlfriend, Hannah. Like David Lowery’s film A Ghost Story, this isn’t a supernatural tale, but rather a story haunted by key moments in the timeline of a relationship, a family, a home and a country. Don’t go in expecting a horror story, but be prepared for the horrors of what a lifetime can entail.

Wyld has a beautiful writing style, and I liked the dual perspectives used to tell the story, although they occasionally took me a moment to piece things together. The ending was especially poignant and beautiful.

This is a heartbreakingly beautiful story of the power of generational trauma. The two POV characters are partners Max and Evie and the story is told in a before, then and after structure switchin between London where they live and Australia, where Evie grew up. Max recently deceased in an unknown accident is stuck his flat that he shared with Evie, as he watches her grieve and try to move on with her life. The often tense dynamics of their relationship are slowly and the reasons for why Evie is so closed off on the topic of her family are revealed.

Not an easy read but for sure a fascinating one. This is a story about grief, loss and the values of a human relationship that will devastate you - in the best way.

this book is a beautiful autopsy of a lost but loving relationship & the complications of life after death. it deals very well with max’s perspective, his observations & the reflections of someone watching his past life fade away from him. it reminded me a lot of A Ghost Story, a film directed by David Lowery from 2017 (go have a watch), especially in how it portrays the loneliness of both characters. i liked the dual narratives as it reveals both sides of the grief & heartbreak from two completely different perspectives, however i started to feel lost when other characters started to have chapters as well, especially when they hadn’t been integrated into the plot before. it got to the point where i felt pretty confused but still enjoyed the exploration of generational trauma. unfortunately the thing i most enjoyed about the plot lost its significance & that was max. still an enjoyable read nonetheless & very beautiful writing.

The Echoes / Evie Wyld

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Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he is still here, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the apartment they shared and begins to realize how much of her life was invisible to him. In the weeks and months before Max’s death, Hannah was haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape.

I think my main problem was that I went into this book imagining the plot in one way then realised straight away it wasn’t what I expected 🙈 it took some time for me to realise that, just because it’s not what I expected, it doesn’t mean that I won’t like it!

I liked the chapters that were called “After”. These were the chapters about Max seeing what Hannah is up to. This is what I expected the whole book to be like so I found them my favourite parts. I would have liked more of these chapters actually!

I found it quite difficult to keep up with who was who and what the section was about when it was the “Before” chapters. I think this is a book that’s best being read in long stretches - found it easier to follow when I read for an hour rather than 10 minutes at a time.

I imagine people who like anything else by the author would enjoy this! There’s definitely a unique writing style! It felt very poetic and beautiful which also made it great to imagine in my head.

A beautiful multiple perspective exploration of female generational trauma that gently pulls you in and wraps you in its story. Full of secrets, ghosts, darkness and light, I didn’t want it to end. The layers of storytelling travel backwards and forwards across time and continents and piece together in an emotionally satisfying way, like laying the correct piece in a jigsaw and the image revealing itself to be more detailed and vivid than you’d imagined. Evie Wyld never fails to impress and this book will stay with me for a long time.

I was blown away by this book and in floods of tears at the end. Evie Wyld does an astounding job at portraying how people cope with grief and loss. Her characters are very well drawn and interesting, and the scenarios she creates are utterly immersive. She is brilliant at creating a sense of place, and of making the reader feel part of the situations she has created. It's a truly moving novel that I have been recommending to people since reading it.

The 'blurb' for the book is that a man, Max, dies and then becomes a ghost watching over his former girlfriend Hannah as she deals with his loss. This is a very important element of the novel but it's also so much more than that. As Hannah tries to come to terms with Max's death we also delve into her past, a troubled childhood growing up in Australia, then through this we learn about the histories of her parents and other relatives too.

I was struck by how Wyld can conjure up characters very vividly in a very short space of time. 'Uncle Tone' for instance, is a relatively important side character in Hannah's life, and we see him through her eyes a number of times as we learn about her upbringing. But we then get a chapter that tells his story from his point of view, and we see events that occurred to him through the eyes of his sister, Hannah's mum Kerry, too. This way of writing brings more dimensions to the characters and gives the impression that the author is weaving an intricate, multi-layered story.

All of her characters are interesting, not just the 'main' ones. All together, the individual stories tell a bigger story of how people's past experiences shape not only them but the people they are close to as well.

There are funny parts that had me laughing out loud, especially the dialogue between Hannah and Max, a scene with Max's family, and Hannah's conversations with her friend Janey. I can't give away the ending but I found it so moving that it still makes me cry to think about it.

This is such an impressive, striking novel. Many thanks to Netgalley for letting me read it.

I found this book difficult to get into but once I did, I loved it.
Max is a ghost and is observing his girlfriend Hannah in her grief.
This book is about relationships and secrets and fallible human beings
It's a hard read at times but worth pursuing because the writing is masterful and beautiful

Beautiful writing, a lot of really lovely contemplative moments, but I never really connected with any of the characters, everything felt disjointed and muddled up and needlessly buried under a cloud of pretend-mystery. Absolutely gorgeous prose and cool premise, but I think this one is just not the book for me.

A story of love, loss, and of the secrets of the past being uncovered. Max is a ghost, still inhabiting the flat where he lived with his Australian girlfriend Hannah - he finds he can’t quite accept that he has died and desperately wants Hannah to know that he is still watching over her. The story explores some pretty gritty issues in Hannah’s past and introduces the reader to a range of interesting but not always likeable characters. It is set in three separate time lines, then, now and after, which does occasionally get a little confusing, but the book is moving, well paced, well characterised and is definitely thought provoking.

A unique multi-layered novel with multiple POVs that addresses powerful and emotive subjects in a unique and darkly humorous way. Intergenerational trauma, abuse and grief are all handled with an expert pen. Intense yet beautiful writing.
My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own unbiased opinion.

I picked this one to read whilst on a recent holiday, noting that it was described as a ghost story, I did question whether poolside in the searing sunshine was the most appropriate place to read it. Less than twenty four hours later, as I read the final paragraph, I realised that this ‘ghost story’ was one of the best books I’d read this year.

I was captivated from the off; I was engrossed. It describes great sadness, grief and regret but it does so with authentic emotion and humour which make it so relatable. I experienced the highs and the lows with both Max and Hannah and I was as reluctant to let them go as they were each other.

The writing is stunning, I found myself re-reading passages so I could fully appreciate the words, the language and the images which they conjured. I felt almost bereft when I’d finished; thinking about missed opportunities, the things we never say, the stories we don’t tell.

I’ve been trying to put my finger on what it was about this book that had such a powerful effect on me. It is haunting, stunning, moving beautiful and all the rest but I can’t find the words to do it justice. As the phrase goes it just has that ‘je ne sais quoi’ quality.

By far one of my favourite reads this year.

This is another winner from award-winning author, Evie Wyld. In "The Echoes," Wyld explores generational trauma and how this trauma impacts the way we connect and love other people. Wyld creates a large groups of characters (generations of women), and she moves between these characters' points of view throughout the novel. The novel begins as a ghost story about a man named Max who has died and he remains in the flat he shared with his girlfriend, Hannah. The novel then moves to the stories of the women in Hannah's family tree.

While I went into "The Echoes" thinking it was going to be a ghost story, the novel quickly turned into a very serious book about generational pain. Wyld is an expert at the silences and the unspoken facts that permeate relationships (the passive aggressiveness, the anger, the lies we tell ourselves,etc.). She never devolves into melodrama when characters must confront the betrayals and the sadnesses of their lives. Instead, she creates characters we understand and empathise with even as they endure horrific things (trying to be vague as not to spoil the book).

This is definitely one to watch out for as a possible contender for the women's prize for fiction in 2025.

Evie Wyld is just simply a great writer!
This book is a haunting read that is so beautifully and evocatively written the characters and the feelings you have whilst reading it stay with you for a long time. That feels like a cliché to write but it is absolutely true!
The structure of the piece centres around Hannah and her partner Max. The sections are entitled ‘Before’ which explores the relationship of the two protagonists, ‘After’ in which we experience the death of Max who then proceeds to haunt the flat he lived in with Hannah in London. There are also sections entitled ‘Then’ which flashback to Hannah’s childhood in rural Australia. We learn of Hannah’s past and meet her troubled family. Uncle Tone, her mother and older sister Rachel all live together on The Echoes, land that itself is troubled with the past. It used to be the site of a residential school for indigenous children where they were subject to mistreatment and abuse.
The ghosts of this trauma seem to haunt the land also and yet it can also be a place of great beauty and tranquillity for Hannah, yet as a reader equipped with the knowledge of the past juxtaposed with Hannah’s self harming in the present the experience becomes unsettling as you anticipate all is not well. This is further compounded by Max’s death and although his haunting of the flat does provide comic relief, he finds it highly inconvenient to be a ghost, we experience the grief of Hannah in her loss and are as equally powerful to do anything but watch.
Max’s desire to find out what happened to him and what caused his death also works to drive the narrative forward. We realise as readers that we are slowly creeping closer to finding out what happened to Hannah and her family on The Echoes and discovering the reason she ignores her mother’s letters and has lost contact with her sister. Secrets eventually do reveal themselves in poignant and emotive ways. Despite the trauma that has been experienced by characters there is also much that is positive and funny in this book.
A dark book that explores history, narratives and trauma but also on that offers quietly hopeful endings.

This book Was easy to follow whilst the narrative jumps between time to sectioned with Max as a ghost trapped in the flat, who can’t leave. And then the After”; Hannah’s chapters, set in the run-up to Max’s death, called “Before”; and “Then” – flashbacks to Hannah’s childhood in rural Australia.

Lots of fascinating stories inside stories. Full of tension. The characters have you immersed in the storyline and you want to genuinely know why Hannah left for the UK.

Heart wrenching at times. Also dark, witty and laugh out loud.

A story that highlights emotions, grief and trauma. Hidden secrets and how they can shatter your relationships.
And how life really does go on for those left living.

I really enjoyed this book!