The Heart Is A Star: The beautiful and heartbreaking bestselling debut novel about family and identity for readers of Holly Ringland, Bonnie Garmus and Ann Napolitano

About the book

Absorbing, lyrical, vivid and compulsively readable - The Heart is a Star is beautiful storytelling from a talented new writer. A novel for fans of Holly Ringland, Jacqueline Maley, Hannah Richell.

Layla Byrnes is exhausted. She's juggling a demanding job as an anaesthetist, a disintegrating marriage, her young kids, and a needy lover. And most particularly she's managing her histrionically unstable mother, who repeatedly threatens to kill herself.

But this year, it's different. When her mother rings just before Christmas, she doesn't follow the usual script. Instead, she tells Layla that there's something she needs to tell her about her much-loved father. In response, Layla drops everything to rush to her childhood home on the wild west coast of Tasmania. She's determined to finally confront her mother - and find out what really happened to her father - and lay some demons to rest.

The Heart is a Star is an engrossing, lyrical and powerfully absorbing novel about the complicated and beautiful messiness of midlife; about the ways in which we navigate an intricate, complicated world; and about how we can uncover our true selves when we are forced to face the myths that make us.

'Tense, heartbreaking and crackling with vivid honesty - all those tiny, telling details that have you nodding with recognition and wanting to gulp the book in one rush of a sitting. I could not put this book down. A new star is born in the writing firmament.' Nikki Gemmell

'Captivating ... The Heart is a Star is a powerful novel with evocative and enticing language that will appeal to readers of Richard Flanagan and Holly Ringland. Rooted in feminine empowerment, Rogers' debut is necessary and enthralling reading, and will stay with the reader long after the last page.' Books+Publishing

'Powerful, lyrical ... I was enthralled by its physical and emotional landscapes and compelled by its dark mysteries.' Lee Kofman, The Writer Laid Bare

'The Heart is a Star is a novel that will transport you.' Christine Balint, Water Music

'A novel to treasure. Fragile, tender, honest, raw - and luminescent with hope.' Mimi Kwa, House of Kwa

'Impressive ... a compelling story told with sensitivity and intelligence' Lyn Yeowart, The Silent Listener

'An unflinching, beautiful interrogation of modern womanhood, brimming with yearning and lyricism' Victoria Brookman, Burnt Out

'Soul-wrenching and heart-mending in equal measure' Ailsa Wild, The Care Factor