When We Lost Our Heads Audiobook By Heather O'Neill cover art

When We Lost Our Heads

A Novel

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When We Lost Our Heads

By: Heather O'Neill
Narrated by: Jeanna Phillips
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“Every decent friendship comes with a drop of hatred. But that hatred is like honey in the tea. It makes it addictive.”

Charismatic Marie Antoine is the daughter of the richest man in 19th century Montreal. She has everything she wants, except for a best friend - until clever, scheming Sadie Arnett moves to the neighborhood. Immediately united by their passion and intensity, Marie and Sadie attract and repel each other in ways that thrill them both. Their games soon become tinged with risk, even violence. Forced to separate by the adults around them, they spend years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity. And when a singular event brings them back together, the dizzying effects will upend the city.

Traveling from a repressive finishing school to a vibrant brothel, taking listeners firsthand into the brutality of factory life and the opulent lives of Montreal’s wealthy, When We Lost Our Heads dazzlingly explores gender, sex, desire, class, and the terrifying power of the human heart when it can’t let someone go.

©2022 Heather O'Neill (P)2022 Penguin Audio Fiction Friendship Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Women's Fiction Heartfelt

Critic reviews

"This novel has everything...opulence, whimsy, sugar barons, brothels, factories, revolution, and an intense friendship that forces both participants to straddle darkness and light while clinging to one another for dear life." —Literary Hub

"A twisted, perverse story that's difficult to put down...you'll be desperate to know what [the characters] do next." —Buzzfeed

"Delightful...The plot satisfies with twists and turns to the end, but it’s the audaciousness of spirit emboldening most of [O'Neill's] female characters that makes this novel shine." —New York Journal of Books
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I am blown away. I love this storyline. The complex ideas, all laid out so well. The character development, how the plot built overtime and when it jumped back in time it was clear where you were and what was going on.
I had 17 minutes left. And I did not want to finish this book, because I did not want this story to be over. Yet, I couldn't help myself more than one day to sit and listen to how this was tied together.
20/10 would recommend
Thank you for sharing these, words, ideas, and these people into my life. I am forever grateful for storytellers.

I could not put this book down

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This book was completely directionless at the court. It’s a story about a two girls and their friendship, but the overall theme was lost with everything else going on. I feel like the author tried to fit in too many messages in the story.

Fizzled out

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The story was good but many short sentences made it feel choppy in its cadence, and the lilting voice was a lot. Kept wanting the young girl voice to mature or something. The story was interesting and the characters well formed, don’t regret reading it, liked the femininity of it all most

The narrator was problematic for me.

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10/10, obsessed. the narrator is perfect! i know this isn’t heather o’neill’s most popular book but it is actually one of my favs of all time.

one of my all time favs

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Could not get into this book at all. From the voice of the narrator to the novel itself hard pass on all accounts.

Hard Pass

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My book group picked this book so I got through it, but just barely. If I were teaching a writing workshop, I’d use this as an example of how not to write.

How NOT to write similes and metaphors

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I’m a Heather O’Neil Stan at the end of my patience. Lullabies for Little Criminals is my all time favorite novel. I enjoyed Daydreams of Angels and Girl Who was Saturday Night. Lonely Hearts Hotel had a bad ending and a few WTF moments but it at least had a story.

When We Lost Our Heads started out enjoyable but O’Neil fell too much in love with her whimsical ideas. Just sell the book as a compendium of short stories then. At some point the book stopped being the story.

Heather, get an editor!

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Between the complete disgusting behavior of women and the man hating theme, this book was a waste of time.

Horrible

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