Wreck – Catherine Newman

Published By: Doubleday
Pages: 240
Released On: 29/01/2026

Rocky, Nick, Willa and Jamie. A normal loving, anxious, messy, relatable, family.

Rocky has her own her way of processing disasters: 1. This could happen to us. 2. This couldn’t happen to us. And then there’s a secret third column: ‘This could happen to us unless I am very careful/ superstitious/ grateful…’

So when a former classmate of Jamie’s dies in a seemingly random accident, Rocky becomes obsessed. She’s also developed a niggling medical condition that won’t go away. On the surface, she is still living her best life as the irreverent, funny, unpredictable beating heart of her family. Her father is his unique, adorable self; Willa is prone to bouts of existential angst whilst berating the fact that her mother has zero filter; Nick is steady, logical, sometimes infuriating.

But if accidents can happen – and they do – is it safe to love anyone?

*****

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.

I have a…not a love/hate relationship, that seems too harsh, but I’ve definitely felt both positive and negative about her work. I thought We All Want Impossible Things was very good, but then I disliked Sandwich, so this is like the one that’ll split the difference.

It’s very dialogue heavy, which generally I don’t like. I’m a big narrative fan rather than dialogue, and I think that’s because I struggle to write it myself. But it is very dialogue heavy and it really works because it feels like a real conversation between a real family, it’s so familiar this cacophony of talking and noise, rambling of things that are potentially inconsequential.

There are some difficult subjects touched upon – none that I’ll spoil here – and it may seem like too many in such a short book, but they are things that the average reader will identify with and that keeps it manageable.

It feels like it should be quite boring, as it’s just a book about regular everyday life with some normal, if somewhat eccentric, characters. It shouldn’t be exciting. But Catherine has managed to do that. I may not have liked her second book but I can appreciate her writing talent, and she has this amazing ability to write “boring” everyday characters and everyday events and make them so absorbing.

I’ll be honest, nothing really happens – that links to what I said above about mundane everyday events. It’s a great character study. It’s not full of twists or turns and shocks, but it still maintains an enjoyable read.

The pacing…some may say it’s slow, and I do understand what they mean. I’ve thought about it a lot but I think overall it flows well. It’s not very long either, and the quiet plot might make it feel like it’s going on a bit long, but I didn’t mind it too much.

Rocky is a wonderful main character; she might be a wife and mother (which I am not) but I so related to her, being a bit of a hypochondriac and anxious about everything. I loved this fierce love she has for her family and her want to help everyone and make everything better. Her Dad was also a wonderful addition, almost like a doddery old man, who I thought was hilarious. There are a few other characters and they’re all fine, but this is 100% Rocky’s story. Or maybe 90%, the rest being her dad.

I found out after reading this that it is actually the follow-up to Sandwich, which is so bizarre considering how much I enjoyed this and how much I disliked that one. But I will say that whilst you may get more out of it if you read Sandwich first, it is perfectly enjoyable as a standalone, and in my opinion, it might be even better if you do read this one on its own, because it is so much better than its predecessor.