"Shetterly writes with intimate, journal-like immediacy, threading humor and longing throughout Alice's journey. Without veering into the maudlin or the morose, her prose is warm and self-aware. Readers who cherished the self-reinvention of Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun (1996), the emotional depth of Nina Riggs' The Bright Hour (2017), and the fish-out-of- water perspective of Nicki Chen's When in Vanuatu (2021) will enjoy Shetterly's luminous and life-affirming novel." -- Booklist (starred review)

"What a deliciously irresistible novel! In The Gulf of Lions, Caitlin Shetterly takes us on a trip through France where we inhale the scenery, the cafe au lait and croissants, and the emotional journey of a travel writer as she tries to both heal and forgive. This book is a five-star read. I guarantee you'll love it." -- Elin Hilderbrand

"A wry, aching, life-affirming novel about cancer, motherhood, and the mess of being human. Caitlin Shetterly writes with unsparing honesty and grace. A tour de force." -- Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Please Don't Lie and The Exiles

"A stunning meditation on midlife and motherhood that builds into something urgent and unforgettable. The Gulf of Lions captures the beauty and complexity of being human with rare depth and sincerity." -- Meagan Church, New York Times bestselling author of The Mad Wife

"The Gulf of Lions is a joyful, generous portrayal of the love between mothers and children, the exhilaration of discovering new places, gorgeous food, and the many sensual pleasures of France. This novel examines the thorny question of what can we offer others when we are vulnerable ourselves; it arrives at a beautiful answer." -- Alice Elliott Dark, author of Fellowship Point and In the Gloaming

"This is a tender, deeply felt novel, a love story about motherhood and coming of age. Alice and her young daughters travel to France where they find both beauty and danger. Caitlin Shetterly writes masterfully about the journey this family takes and the heartrending, necessary push and pull between parent and child." -- Allegra Goodman, author of Isola and Sam

"Caitlin Shetterly has written a gorgeous novel about rediscovering joy. The Gulf of Lions is unflinchingly honest about the work of living and beautiful about the rewards of reaching for hope." -- Ann Packer, author of Some Bright Nowhere and The Children's Crusade

"An exquisite and indelible portrait of mothers and daughters and the many ways we lose our children. Caitlin Shetterly writes with a thin skin to the world, alert to both its beauty and its ghastliness. I didn't so much read this novel as inhabit it." -- Daisy Alpert Florin, author of My Last Innocent Year

"The family's year of living dangerously unfolds slowly, yet compellingly.... What we see from the distance of the novel and its fundamentally earnest protagonists is that despite the boredom, fear, loneliness and despair the pandemic wrought, it also brought the potential to become the only thing we have to look forward to: the better, happier humans we aspire to be.... I loved reading this book, which I gulped down in two otherwise busy days." -- Los Angeles Times, on Pete and Alice in Maine

"[A] perceptive debut novel . . . the psychological acuity applied to the family drama is undeniable." - Publishers Weekly, on Pete and Alice in Maine

"Shetterly . . . gives voice to the fearful, isolated beginnings of COVID-19. . . . With the tone and tenor of Matthew Norman's Last Couple Standing, Sarah Pekkanen's The Ever After, and Greg Olear's Fathermucker, the story taps on every fault line within one family, as a whole world grapples with its own fragility. Heartwarming and heartwrenching in equal turns, Shetterly's foray into fiction is unforgettable." - Booklist (starred review), on Pete and Alice in Maine

"A masterly debut novel about the first year of the plague and its corrosive effects on one family in the United States struggling to survive intact. Readers will be hard-pressed to leave this story behind." - Library Journal, on Pete and Alice in Maine

"Shetterly's debut achieves a subtle grace, a quality of light and shadow worthy of a Bergman film." -- New York Times Book Review on Pete and Alice in Maine

"Thought-provoking and raw, this pandemic reflection is about so much more than lockdown--it's about our roles in society and how to come into our own as mothers and women." - Zibby Owens, Good Morning America, on Pete and Alice in Maine

"A tender, big-hearted, clear-eyed portrait of a marriage, and a family, in crisis--set during the plague years when the entire world was in crisis. As she investigates the insidious effect of lies, betrayal, fear, and anger, not to mention the mundane joys and wrenching heartaches of everyday life, Caitlin Shetterly gets to the heart of what it means to be a family." - Christina Baker Kline, on Pete and Alice in Maine

"When we first meet the title characters of Caitlin Shetterly's gripping novel Pete and Alice in Maine, they're fleeing pandemic ravaged New York with their children for the relative safety of their second home. How satisfying it would be in this age of easy social media judgment to despise them for their privilege. The only thing preventing it, really, is that this very fine novel--like all good novels--insists upon getting to know them. I loved it." - Richard Russo, on Pete and Alice in Maine