The Catch
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  • Published: 22 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529923650
  • Imprint: Merky Books
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $38.00

The Catch

  • Yrsa Daley-Ward
Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
22 Jul 2025
EBook
10 Jul 2025
Audiobook
10 Jul 2025
Hardback
10 Aug 2025
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Award-winning author, Yrsa Daley-Ward’s stylishly intriguing and experimental debut novel exploring family, fate and female fantasies.

‘Totally original, entirely compelling and astonishingly well crafted, The Catch solidifies Yrsa Daley-Ward as one of Britain's best and boldest voices. A dark and lyrical debut that's well worth the wait.’ Yomi Adegoke, author of Slay in Your Lane and The List

'A fantastic, shimmering work. Ysra Daley-Ward's rich exploration of Black womanhood and familial complexities is a must read.' Irenosen Okojie

‘From one of my favourite living writers, The Catch is a slippery shape-shifting delight. Yrsa’s novel is fluorescently dark and winding; brilliant in its investigation of refractions and meaning.’
Eloghosa Osunde, author of VAGABONDS!

‘Yrsa’s work is like holding the truth in your hands. A glorious living thing’ FLORENCE WELCH


A darkly whimsical debut about 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. 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.

Clara, a celebrity author in desperate need of validation, believes Serene is their mother, while Dempsey, isolated and content to remain so, believes she is a con woman. As they clash over this stranger, 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 Black 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?\"
  • Published: 22 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529923650
  • Imprint: Merky Books
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $38.00
Categories:

Praise for The Catch

The Catch is a wonderfully dark, twisty collision of complicated sister-love, grief, and memory. With prose that is lyrical and electric, Yrsa Daley-Ward takes her characters through a journey where absence and longing remake reality in haunting and beautiful ways. This is a wildly inventive debut.

Essie Chambers, author of Swift River

A fantastic, shimmering work. Ysra Daley-Ward's rich exploration of Black womanhood and familial complexities is a must read.

Irenosen Okojie

A lyrical, meta, intriguing novel that unfolds and keeps you guessing. Daley-Ward is one of those impressive writers who blends a gripping plot with truly unique prose

Roxy Dunn, author of As Young As This

An inventive novel about family from a risk-taking writer. Daley-Ward explores the tension between the twins beautifully... The novel ends with a genuine shock, but it’s earned—it’s a surprising conclusion to a beautifully written and structured book. Elegant and unpredictable in the best possible way

Kirkus Reviews

Totally original, entirely compelling and astonishingly well crafted, The Catch solidifies Yrsa Daley-Ward as one of Britain's best and boldest voices. A dark and lyrical debut that's well worth the wait

Yomi Adegoke