Read an excerpt here.

Wine Dark, Sea Blue is about being what people need you to be, and what happens when all those obligations start to blur. Do you keep the secrets, or do you break?

Arts graduate of a recession generation, Ellie Kazakis has a lot of problems. But finding an actual job is the least of them. There are the complications surrounding her grandmother’s death, the secrets she seems to be keeping from everyone around her, and her own addiction to One Night Friendships- the only time she feels alive is when she knows she doesn’t have to see those strangers ever again.

Wine Dark, Sea Blue is about being what people need you to be, and what happens when all those obligations start to blur. Do you keep the secrets, or do you break?

This is the debut novel of the London writer A.L. Michael. This novel is edgy and explores a culture where jobs are hard to come by and drugs are only too easy to find yet it also explores the role of family and friendship in these difficult times.

This bitterly sardonic, but ironically warm, interior examination of a fractured life in a bonded but mutually destructive family yields a compelling microcosmic picture of a dysfunctional metropolitan landscape…
Steve Whitaker

See the full review here.