'An astonishing achievement' - Sir Jonathan Bate 

'The free-flowing intensity of the wind and waves that drives her characters' lives, also powers Sophie Hardcastle's memorable prose. Her writing sweeps us through hemispheres and across oceans with astonishing and immersive force. This is a deeply moving story of a young woman growing up, and Hardcastle is an extraordinary talent.' - Elleke Boehmer (University of Oxford) 

'Lyrical, profound, and deeply moving Sophie Hardcastle's Below Deck will confront as well as soothe, and is the most tender, hopeful battle-cry of a book.' - Brooke Davis (author of LOST & FOUND)

'Hardcastle has captured the powerful words so many of us struggle to find, and I cannot imagine anyone could finish Below Deck unaffected.' - Bri Lee (bestselling author of EGGSHELL SKULL)

'Below Deck will leave you breathless. Sophie Hardcastle is a phenomenal, courageous talent.' - Clementine Ford (author of FIGHT LIKE A GIRL) 

'How do we tell the story of ourselves when language fails us? With glorious colour, Sophie Hardcastle answers in her gutsy and vivid debut, Below Deck. Her synesthetic heroine, Olivia, experiences the world in pigments: a beloved friend is "velvet lilac", the number three is "uneasy green". Years after a fateful sailing voyage, the memory of a red encounter - deepest red - smoulders away. As timely as it is evocative, Below Deck's polychromatic depiction of trauma and its aftermath speaks to how women learn to inhabit their bodies and the world, and how those dark lessons can be triumphantly unlearned.' - Beejay Silcox, Australian literary critic