Heavy Cream by Blakley-Cartwright, Sarah

"A dazzling, unconventional coming-of-age story that charts, with precision and humor, the many ways to be a woman." --The New York Times

"A magic spell of a book." --Julie Buntin

"Heavy Cream is funny, deeply felt, and positively effervescent, brimming with life and color and texture--I was repeatedly struck by its humor, its compassion, and its candor." --Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had

Abandoned by her mother in New York, sixteen-year-old Geraldine falls under the influence of three women, each seeking to form her in their image, in this "wildly perceptive" (Stefan Merrill Block, New York Times bestselling author of Homeschooled) coming-of-age story from the bestselling author of Alice Sadie Celine.

For Gerry, growing up on the road has always been her mother and her, locked in dysfunction. Homeschooled, she hasn't learned much math. Instead, her mother has taught her how to spend the day at a motel's swimming pool without being a guest and how to dodge paying extra for the chicken on a Caesar salad.

Gerry learns how to pass and adapt, but when she is abandoned in the city, she finds herself in the care of three very different women, each intent on shaping her into competing and incompatible selves. First, there is her mother's old college friend Bonnie, who lives in a world of country clubs and chintzy domesticity. Then there is Nell, her mother's estranged sister and a successful artist, who insists on ambition and self-invention. And finally Finley, an old-money socialite, who ushers Gerry into a rarefied world of Manhattan privilege.

A coming-of-age story that explores unconventional forms of motherhood and caretaking, Heavy Cream is both a charming comedy of manners and a deeply probing look at the complexities of love, mental illness, and inheritance, and one young woman's eccentric path to selfhood.

Author: Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 09/29/2026
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.70w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781668217740

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/22/2026
Booklist 08/01/2026
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2026
Library Journal 09/11/2026 pg. 1

About the Author
Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is the author of Alice Sadie Celine and Red Riding Hood, a #1 New York Times bestseller published worldwide in thirty-eight editions and fifteen languages. She is the editor of Hauser & Wirth's The Artist's Library for Ursula magazine and an associate editor at A Public Space.