First published 2025
A young woman navigates the pandemic while her family reels from a terrible loss. But something else attacks her. A mysterious illness rewires her brain, leaving her thoughts scattered and broken. She fears the floorboards beneath her feet. The same pop song loops endlessly in her head. Her friends become strangers whose faces she cannot place or trust. The disease strips away her former self, memories sliding through her like water. She writes to people she cannot answer: "I live completely in the present now." Her family needs her steady, but steadiness no longer exists. The illness destroys her old mind while offering something unexpected in return. She must decide whether this dissolution means starting over or simply ending. Time moves differently now. Her sense of self unravels as she searches for new ways to think and feel. The question becomes whether losing everything might create space for something else to grow.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, psychological-thriller, family-drama
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: dissolution-of-self, unreliable-narrator
Period: Pandemic
248 pages · Paperback · Bloomsbury Circus
Content warnings: mental-illness