I received an ARC of this book with thanks to HarperCollins via NetGalley.

A narrative about deep illicit love and their lives either side of their relationship with their respective spouses, My Coney Island Baby is a emotively written story about Michael and Cailtin and their profound love for one another in deceitful circumstances. O'Callaghan is a magical writer. He writes with such poetic lyricism and a deep sense of compassion and yearning, that it's hard to feel any sense of contempt for his characters who have shared an adulterous relationship for the past twenty five years. You understand through his use of prose how deeply in love these two people are even though married to others, and it's difficult to condone their relationship when O'Callaghan hands you beautiful tools to see them through such empathetic eyes. He presents you with an awareness and perspective that perhaps you'd have neglected to consider up until now.

As beautifully written as it was, unfortunately I also found my attention span dwindled throughout the book as the pace was leisurely and sometimes slightly dull. It didn't take away from the breathtaking scope of the story, but it made reading more effort than I would care to admit.