Helen Sedgwick

Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in the Herald and Glamour One Day meets The Time Traveler's Wife in this spellbinding, magical debut novel about love, loss, hope and heartbreak that shows us that for each of us, the world can be as lonely or as beautiful as the comets that illuminate the skies above us. R�is�n and Fran�ois first meet in the snowy white expanse of Antarctica. And everything changes. While R�is�n grew up in a tiny village in Ireland, ablaze with a passion for science and the skies and for all there is to discover about the world, Fran�ois was raised by his beautiful young mother, who dreamt of new worlds but was unable to turn her back on her past. As we loop back through their lives, glimpsing each of them only when a comet is visible in the skies above, we see how their paths cross as they come closer and closer to this moment. Theirs are stories filled with love and hope and heartbreak, that show how strangers can be connected and ghosts can be real, and the world can be as lonely or as beautiful as the comets themselves.

The Comet Seekers

A magical, intoxicating debut novel, both intimate and epic, that intertwines the past, present, and future of two lovers bound by the passing of great comets overhead and a coterie of remarkable ancestors. Róisín and François are immediately drawn to each other when they meet at a remote research base on the frozen ice sheets of Antarctica. At first glance, the pair could not be more different. Older by a few years, Róisín, a daughter of Ireland and a peripatetic astronomer, joins the science team to observe the fracturing of a comet overhead. François, the base’s chef, has just left his birthplace in Bayeux, France, for only the second time in his life. Yet devastating tragedy and the longing for a fresh start, which they share, as well as an indelible but unknown bond that stretches back centuries, connect them to each other. Helen Sedgwick carefully unfolds their surprisingly intertwined paths, moving forward and back through time to reveal how these lovers’ destinies have long been tied to each other by the skies—the arrival of comets great and small. In telling Róisín and François’s story, Sedgwick illuminates the lives of their ancestors, showing how strangers can be connected and ghosts can be real, and how the way we choose to see the world can be as desolate or as beautiful as the comets themselves. A mesmerizing, skillfully crafted, and emotionally perceptive novel that explores the choices we make, the connections we miss, and the ties that inextricably join our fates, The Comet Seekers reflects how the shifting cosmos unite us all through life, beyond death, and across the whole of time.

A Novel

Ryan Mateyk

This was such a gorgeous book. Some of the most beautiful and expressive writing I've read in a long time, it tells a story full of love and melancholy, of mystical, fated relationships, of comets and ghosts. This was an incredible reading experience and a nice start for 2017.

Abby Beatrice Quick

Corey White

Gorgeous, heavy at times, best when read slow, under blankets.

Renee Blankenship

The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgwick caught my eye partially because the cover is intriguing and also because a review I read compared it to The Time Traveler's Wife (LOVE). I purchased this soon after it was released, taking a gamble on both of those things that I would love it. I wasn't wrong!

Again, a well written setting is one of the things that will keep me going in a story and this one did not disappoint, being that it revolved around various comets throughout time. I love books that travel generations, especially when there is something significant linking them together. In this case, the comets.

Roisin and Francois captivated me not through their own present day story, but the numerous instances in which they crossed paths prior to actually meeting in Antartica. It made me wonder if you would sense something like that, in another person, all those previous encounters before you "knew" them. If some fiber of your being would be able to connect those dots regardless of your knowing.

Pair that with ghosts of relatives past, all connected through the comets, oh gosh. I couldn't get enough of these stories! I loved traveling back in time and meeting each family member, watching their story unfold under another miraculous comet in the sky.

I think this book is highly underrated, I've hardly heard mention of it anywhere and am SO glad I came across it. Sedgwick's storytelling, crafting all of these events into a larger picture and connecting two people over time, was masterful. I cannot wait to read this one again, more slowly this time.

The Comet Seekers

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