Ruins

Thanks to Goodreads, the author and the publisher for this book. I won this in October 2025 but received it in May 2026. Delayed from publisher despite Goodreads many attempts to contact them. Goodreads was pretty persistent in doing so and they gave me updates monthly. Not sure why they never contacted them for so long.

The title to me can be interpreted two ways -- Ruins as in ruining Emma and Julian's marriage maybe or as Ruins as in Greece since that's where the book is set.

Emma and Julian first start out in Corfu and then will be going to Athens to housesit a friends house for three months. Julian is doing research. Julia was working in an advertising agency but left.

One scene in Corfu really grossed me out and I cannot unsee it and show more it's not a sex scene. Emma is very pale skinned and forgot her hat when they were on the beach. Her scalp was burned so bad that the next day she extracted a disturbingly long piece of skin from it that you can see the pinpricks through which her hair had once been. Even Julian said it was gross.

When they reached Athens, Julian threw a party for his friends friends and Emma got bored with the conversations so decided to go out for ice which really wasn't needed of course. She went into a bar and when she went to leave she saw a woman in the alley with a guy having fun. She and Lena got to talking. That was it and Emma left. Will they meet again? You better believe it. Emma goes back to the bar and invites her back to the apartment. She has this idea that she wants Lena and Julian to get together (read between the lines). For some reason she mentioned to Julian that she wanted an open marriage (my phrasing not hers) and decided that Lena was the one. Emma and Julian are in their 30s and Lena is 22.

Julian always wanted to have kids but Emma didn't. However, Emma got pregnant a while back and miscarried and after that she quit her job. Julian is having second thoughts and now wants to abandon his research paper and have a family. Now Emma tells him that she no longer wants any contact with Lena and tells her so. Lena after hearing this, keeps calling Julian. Then one day she shows up at their door unannounced. She has an announcement. You can guess what it is right? I shouldn't have been shocked but I was.

Things escalate from there with Lena and then her brother Darius.

I wasn't expecting what happened later in the book with Lena that's for sure. The ending was a year later, a year after they returned from Athens and it wasn't a good ending. Sort of sad, in fact but not devastating.

Was it worth waiting this long for it? In the long run, yes. show less

Many aspects rather contrived but the relationships seemed realistic and interestingly drawn