“I couldn’t put it down and feel haunted by every moment, every sentence.”

—JOANNA RAKOFF

“… brims with sex and violence and threat, and moves to a crescendo of strange and magical beauty.”

—Rebecca stott

“Haunting and visceral as a fairytale…”

—Lilly Dancyger

“Gorgeously written and magically dressed…”

—Hannah Lillith Assadi

Sissy is used to being on the outside. The new girl in her school in the West Country of England, she recently arrived with her troubled mother, prone to letting Sissy fend for herself.

But from the day Sissy fights a boy in front of Tegan, she's no longer alone. Bonded by violence, they grow so close they feel like one being: wrapped around each other in bed at sleepovers, sending photographs to men they meet online, and scaring each other with reports of the girls being snatched at night in their town.

Over the course of the school year, they find themselves on the threshold of girlhood, with threats gathering thick and fast around them. And as their make-believe worlds bleed into their daily lives, Sissy feels herself transforming into something strange and terrifying.

Amphibian is a tender, haunting coming-of-age debut about desire, precocity and the intensity of early friendships that have the power to upend our lives.

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Praise for Amphibian

“Wetherall’s authentic coming-of-age story taps into the emotional intensity of girlhood and makes palpable her protagonists’ aching desire to lose their innocence.”—Publisher’s Weekly

“…a gripping study of adolescent self- discovery. … Wetherall evokes the psychological pressures of teenage friendships but also their fleeting highs, in a coolly observed portrait of the intense period when influence by peers easily trumps parental control.” —The Financial Times

“… has a queasily compelling power … Wetherall’s prose is thick with the terror and wonder of those turbulent years of physical change, and comes laced with mythic, mystic resonances.” —The Times (UK)

“This haunting coming-of-age novel is a stark reminder of just how powerful our first friendships can be—and how they can affect us for the rest of our lives. Mesmerising.” —Heat Magazine - 5* Book of the Week  

“From the perspective of a twelve-year-old, Wetherall bears witness to the magic and mystery of girlhood. With all of the tension of a story written on the brink of transformation, Amphibian finds agency in becoming.”—Brooklyn Rail

“Dark and devastating, Amphibian is a coming-of-age novel about the dangers and pleasures of impending adulthood.”—Foreward

“There’s so much more than plot to this gorgeously observed novel, and I found myself vibrating with fear and love for Sissy, and also recognition of the girls’ universal longings for something bigger, more meaningful than the small suburban lives they’ve been allotted. And my heart broke, over and over, for Sissy’s fragile, familiar mother, Mou, as she struggles to make a life for herself and her child fully and completely alone. Even typing that sentence, well, tears sprang into my eyes.”—Joanna Rakoff, internationally bestselling author of My Salinger Year, reviewed in “A Life in Books”

"In her debut novel, Tyler Wetherall mines the strange depths of female friendship for all of its traumatic treasure. Rarely have I felt so viscerally transported back in time as I did while reading this beautiful and haunting book. Gorgeously written and magically dressed, Amphibian resurrected for me the exquisite and ecstatic pains of girlhood." —Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of Sonora and The Stars Are Not Yet Bells 

“It was something special to exist in the world of this book. Amphibian captures the contradictions of adolescence: the fear of and ache for change, the repulsive and joyful explorations of one’s body, the need for protection and the urge to break free. In this exhilarating and visceral story, the final years of make-believe collide with the early years of real world consequences. In Wetherall’s insistence on peering into all the dark corners of adolescence, she is able to do something quite profound: to rightfully dignify the experience of girlhood. I will be thinking about these characters and this story for a long time.” —Allison Behringer, award-winning narrative audio journalist and creator of Bodies podcast

"I absolutely love this book. Haunting and visceral as a fairytale, Amphibian captures girlhood in all its feral, mythic glory and horror. Sissy and Tegan have a place in my heart forever." —Lilly Dancyger, author of First Love and Negative Space, and editor of Burn It Down

“Tyler Wetherall is a fine writer and a great storyteller. Her debut novel is unlike anything else I have read. As a tale of childhood friendship, it brims with sex and violence and threat, and moves to a crescendo of strange and magical beauty. I recognised the strangeness of my own girlhood in it, and I am sure that other readers will do the same. Amphibian will stay with me for a long time. Tyler's art is to weave together a weight of observatory realist detail with the surreal - what Elizabeth Bishop called the 'surreality of the everyday'. The result here is terrific.” —Rebecca Stott, Costa Award winning author of In the Days of Rain, Dark Earth, and many others

Amphibian in the media

“Portal to a Forgotten Land: Finding Your Character’s Voice In Old Diaries,” LitHub

“What Will It Take To Destigmatize Female Masturbation?” British Vogue

“7 Books Channeling the Mythic Horror of Girlhood,” Electric Literature

Interview with Hannah Burns, Brooklyn Rail

“Lessons From Cinema: How Scriptwriting Saved My Novel,” Poets & Writers

“Lessons From Cinema: Writing Young Protagonists,” Poets & Writers

“Lessons From Cinema: Blurring the Line Between Magical Realism and Metaphor,” Poets & Writers

Praise for Tyler’s Memoir, No Way Home:

“Wetherall has written a luminous memoir that no one who reads it will soon forget.” —The Washington Post

"A searing and heart-wrenching coming-of-age memoir...Wetherall is a beautiful writer, but what makes this memoir so unique is her ability to seamlessly blend a propulsive tale of buried secrets and familial betrayal with a tender father-daughter story about the difficult road to, and power of, forgiveness." —LitHub

Fascinating and altogether moving, No Way Home is an unforgettable page-turner that proves the truth really is stranger than fiction." —Bustle

"Revealing and emotionally nuanced, Wetherall's book probes the dark underside of family relationships to uncover the meaning of acceptance and forgiveness. A compassionate memoir of self-discovery." —Kirkus Reviews