by Sara Sligar
First published 2025
Clara Wieland thought she had escaped her family's notorious reputation. She and her brother Teddy survived their parents' tragic deaths and the media circus that followed. Now they live with Teddy's wife Jess at the family estate on a remote Maine island. The past feels safely buried until Teddy announces his Senate campaign. Then explicit videos of Clara surface online. She has no memory of filming them. Clara struggles to determine if the footage is real or fabricated while everyone around her questions her sanity. The leak threatens to destroy Teddy's political ambitions and resurrect old rumors about the Wieland family curse. Clara believes someone is systematically targeting her family, but she must uncover the truth before the forces that killed her parents claim her too. The videos represent just the opening move in a larger conspiracy that will test everything Clara believes about her past and her reality.
Genres: mystery, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, psychological, suspenseful, tension-filled, unreliable-reality
Tropes: conspiracy-unraveling, family-curse, gaslighting, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Maine, remote island
Period: contemporary
400 pages · Paperback · Picador
Content warnings: death, gaslighting, mental-illness