They're Going to Love You

A Novel

By: Meg Howrey

Narrated by: Meg Howrey

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2022 • A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH • A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK • A gripping novel set in the world of professional ballet, New York City during the AIDS crisis, and present-day Los Angeles. • "Beautiful...[A] finger-trap puzzle of a plot."—New York Times Book Review

“They’re Going to Love You is my idea of a perfect book. It is about art, life, death, love, and family and it is beautifully and sharply written. I cried several times while reading it, and was sorry to let it go when I was done. I cannot recommend it enough.” —Jami Attenberg, New York Times bestselling author of The Middlesteins and All This Could Be Yours

Throughout her childhood, Carlisle Martin got to see her father, Robert, for only a few precious weeks a year when she visited the brownstone apartment in Greenwich Village he shared with his partner, James. Brilliant but troubled, James gave Carlisle an education in all that he held dear in life—literature, music, and, most of all, dance.

Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and hoping to follow in the footsteps of her mother—a former Balanchine ballerina—Carlisle’s aspiration to become a professional ballet dancer bloomed. But above all else, she longed to be asked to stay at the house on Bank Street, to be a part of Robert and James’s sophisticated world, even as the AIDS crisis brings devastation to their community. Instead, a passionate love affair created a rift between the family, with shattering consequences that reverberated for decades to come. Nineteen years later, when Carlisle receives a phone call that unravels the events of that fateful summer, she sees with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she’s become.

They’re Going to Love You is a gripping and gorgeously written novel of heartbreaking intensity. With psychological precision and a masterfully revealed secret at its heart, it asks what it takes to be an artist in America, and the price of forgiveness, of ambition, and of love.

Who's crying? Perfection in a book

Just Wow.
Having lost my mother a year n a half ago this book really hit home as we didn't have the best or easiest relationship. Our family dynamic is rough also n this book shows that we all struggle with that, imbalances n how we struggle even as adults to move past them. Narrator is perfection, bawling, the prose, the vivid imagery, I will revisit this book again n again.

Amazing!

This novel was so well written and the narration by the author is really the chef’s kiss. I can’t recommend it highly enough!

Enchanting and moving

Beautifully written. The author reads it with great compassion and sensitivity. Highly recommended. Hope a film is in the works!

Beautifully written, beautiful story.

Loved it. Moving, sad, very real and so good. A new favorite. What a book!

love in all it's forms and choreography

I found most notable the interior voice of a young girl not sure of why she made the choices she made and then feeling she had betrayed though she loved.