An Observer Best Debut of the Year

A Granta Best Young British Novelist

I loved this book JULIA ARMFIELD

Exhilarating MONICA HEISEY

'Astonishing' ANDREA LAWLOR

'Should be on everyone's summer reading list' iNEWS

A powerful, sensual novel of the forbidden love between a young woman and the headmasters wife, unfolding across a single a heatwave summer.

In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a young Australian woman arrives to take up the antiquated role of matron. There she meets Mrs S, the headmasters wife, a woman who is her polar opposite: assured, sophisticated, a paragon of femininity.

Over the course of a long, restless heatwave, the matron finds herself irresistibly drawn ever closer into the older womans world with their unspoken desire blooming into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer begins to fade, both know that a choice must finally be made.

Atmospheric and daring GUARDIAN

Theres nothing else like it out there THE TIMES

Desire crackles through these pages like fire TELEGRAPH

Entirely captivating NEW YORK TIMES

Moody, generous and brilliant JESSIE BURTON

'Rare and thrilling' SARAH WINMAN

Wildly sexy, brave, and so gripping I kept forgetting to exhale CHARLOTTE MENDELSON