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A lushly intricate tale of love, and longing, and most of all, of lies — and what it will take to smooth out edges, creased and sharpened and soiled, by years (make that decades) of deceit.

Narrated in the alternating third-person voices of three main protagonists, the story arcs between 2004, (the setting for a terrible crime), and 2024, when a true crime documentary aims to uncover the “truth” concerning the tragic death and its consequences.

Nina, a child of five years old in 2004, has witnessed a drowning, during the hazy alcohol and drug-fueled partying accompanying her mother’s forty-second birthday party. One of the infamous Draytons, Nina’s family is rich, entitled, and envied, for the extravagance of their terracotta pink summer home in Cote D’Azur in the south of France, as well as for all aspects of their monied, privileged lives.

Josie Jackson and Hannah Bailey, sixteen and seventeen years old in 2004, come from the other-side of the tracks — locals in southern France who will never be the ‘beautiful’ people they see personified in the Draytons and their summertime ‘high-season’ it-crowd.

How Josie, Hannah, and Nina’s lives unravel, wildly and in the sudden blink-of-an-eye, is tantalizingly revealed within these pages — a story that manages to provide an extravagantly-layered plot line, a near constant razor-line of tension, and an ending that is ultimately satisfying (on many levels).

A terrific read, this is highly recommended for lovers of evocative settings, tense mysteries, and deeply character-driven stories that cannot help but leave a reader wanting more.

A great big thank you to #Netgalley, the author and the publishers for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.