Best Books of Summer: Washington Post, TIME, USA Today, Forbes
Most Anticipated Books of 2025: TIME, Publishers Weekly, Lit Hub, We Are Bookish, The Millions and Book Riot

The inaugural novel in the Well-Read Black Girl Books series, The Catch is a darkly whimsical tale of women daring to live and create with impunity.

Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother vanished into the Thames. As infants they were adopted into different families, Clara sent to live with a successful, upper-class couple, and Dempsey with a sullen, unaffectionate city councilor. In adulthood, they are content to be all but estranged, until Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like their mother on the streets of London. The catch: this version of Serene, aged not a day, has enjoyed a childless life—the very life, it seems, she might have had if the girls had never been born.

As with most things, Clara and Dempsey cannot see eye to eye on the confounding appearance of this woman. Clara, a celebrity author with a penchant for excessive drinking and one-night stands, is all too willing to welcome the confident and temperamental Serene into her home. But cloistered Dempsey, who makes a modest living doing menial data entry work from the confines of her apartment, is dubious of the whole situation, believing this all to be the insidious ruse of a con woman. Clashing over this stranger who burrows deeper and deeper into their lives, the sisters hurtle toward an altercation that threatens their very existence, forcing them to finally confront their pasts—together.

In her riveting first foray into fiction, Yrsa Daley-Ward conjures a kaleidoscopic multiverse of daughterhood and mother-want, exploring the sacrifices that women must make for self-actualization. The result is a marvel of a debut novel that boldly asks, “How can it ever, ever be a crime to choose yourself?”

BIO

Yrsa Daley-Ward is a poet, writer, and actress. She is the author of The How, bone, and The Terrible, for which she won the PEN Ackerley Prize. She lives in Los Angeles.

REVIEWS

"[A] thrilling exploration of the sacrifices women are forced to make for their families." -- TIME, 'Most Anticipated Books of 2025'

"Yrsa Daley-Ward is back with another gut-punch of a book, and this time, it's an intoxicating story about love, longing, and self-discovery. If you love messy, complicated, deliciously emotional stories, this one’s calling your name." -- Glory Edim, TODAY.com

"There isn’t a box big enough to contain this debut novel. Poet, writer, and actress Daley-Ward ventured into the world of fiction and created a genre of her own . . . In the same way that Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody cycles through a ballad, opera, and hard rock, Daley-Ward melds surrealism and sf with contemporary fiction and a sprinkling of titillating romance. Along the way, she explores the many dimensions of Black female identity, with a special focus on how Black female mental health is often ignored or mistreated. In the first title in Liveright's Well-Read Black Girls Books series, chosen by WRBG founder Glory Edim, Daley-Ward illuminates the complex workings of the mind in a tale filled with intrigue and speculation that will leaves readers guessing long after the final pages." -- Booklist, starred review

"The first work in Liveright’s Well-Read Black Girl Books line (a collaboration with the book club founded by Glory Edim) is recommended for readers who appreciate finely wrought descriptions of people, places, and moments in time and are open to redefining what constitutes a happy ending." -- Judy Poyer, Library Journal

[H]  Liveright Publishing Corporation  /  June 03, 2025

0.9" H x 9.18" L x 6.39" W (1.33 lbs) 352 pages