Ruins

Set on the French Riviera, the Chateau des Sètes is a grand house on the Côte d'Azur, where wealthy holidaymakers spend long summer days in ease and indulgence. Ruby Ashby has always loved her parents' home there. This August, the house fills with unexpected visitors: her parents' friends and their daughters, all eager to make the most of the season's heat and excess.

The adults, shielded from England by their money and privilege, indulge in reckless behavior with no consequences, while the girls are either treated as playthings or left to amuse themselves. Beneath the days by the pool and the nights of heavy drinking, tension builds between the families, and the refuge Ruby treasured begins to feel like a gilded cage.

More than twenty years later, the chateau is for sale. Its glamour has faded, and it carries a troubling history and a lasting legacy. A young widow has returned to France intending to buy it, though she still remembers vividly what happened that summer. Another person, equally haunted by the house, also wants to reclaim it. The story asks who will set the chateau free, and who will become its next victim.

This suspenseful feminist Gothic coming-of-age novel explores the appeal of the Mediterranean and the darkness that lies beneath its sunlit surface, with a focus on the psychological lives of its characters.