Before the Ruins by Victoria Gosling was such an interesting novel. It was definitely a page-turner. The story was so well plotted, and I was very impressed by how well all the pieces seemed to fit together in ways I could not have predicted. The writing style itself was also very good. The characters were complex, but I wasn't very sympathetic to some of them. The pacing was good, and there were not many places I felt like the story dragged on or was rushed.

The book uses a dual-timelines structure to tell a story about Andy, who is a grown adult lady when we meet her, with a fancy job and disposable income. She gets a sudden call from the mother of her childhood best friend, Peter, whom she's mostly grown apart from over the years, to ask for her help in finding him, as he's disappeared. And then we meet teenage Andy, as she recalls a summer in her late teens when she, Peter, Andy's boyfriend Marcus, and their sweet, artistic friend Em spent time hanging around an abandoned manor house in their rural English hometown. This Andy is half-feral, her alcoholic mother having neglected her through much of her childhood. The book tacks back and forth between these two timelines, one in which adult Andy searches for Peter and the second in which teenage Andy and her friends meet David, who appears out of nowhere at the manor one day. He's their same age, and the group spends the summer playing a game in which they hide fake diamonds around the manor for the others to find, inspired by an actual theft of a diamond necklace at that manor in its glory days, but nothing good can last. Sounds intriguing, right? Alas, this book has so many issues. First and foremost is the completely bananas pacing. Virtually nothing happens for the entire first half of the book, it's all setup. I'm a character-focused reader, so I don't usually mind if "nothing happens". But the characters don't work either. They feel very thinly sketched, and then we get to the back half and not only does the plot start hurtling forward frantically, the character moments feel like they're trying to cash checks that were never actually written. Very little about the relationship of the characters to each other makes any sense, in either timeline. The prose is fine, a little on the flowery side, which feels almost jarring because it's swinging for these moments of insight and clarity that the book never really earns or even seems to be earnestly seeking. It's so messy that it's hard to identify just one or two things that might have made a positive difference. A big mess.

This is a gripping debut about friendship and how the dynamics of that friendship are changed when a new member is included. It kept me interested all along. I'll be looking forward to the next book by this author.

I picked this book up many times to read, but found myself being bored with it and struggling to return to it for many weeks afterwards. I finally read the book and found it to just be "okay".

Well, this book didn't quite do it for me! It just didn't draw me in enough to give it more than 3 stars. The storyline wasn't something I've never read in the mystery genre. At times it was also predictable. I would really have loved to give it more stars.

I was excited about this title, but I DNF'd it because it just didn't hold my interest. The concept is a good one, but the story just wasn't working for me. The tone felt wooden.

I was super excited to receive an ARC of this book right before its publication date. The writing is beautiful and captivating, but I didn’t really enjoy my experience reading it, unfortunately. The jumps in the timeline of the story confused me, and I wasn’t super interested in or intrigued by anything that was going on among the plot and the characters. The concept was unique and had potential—a story about an old manor and a missing necklace. When it came to the scenes at the manor, I was all in. I loved those parts. But overall, it just wasn’t for me in the end.

Trigger warning for murder, abuse, death of parent and friend.

Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for the ARC of Before the Ruins by Victoria Gosling!

Big DNF

The first twenty pages were way too confusing for me to even think about continuing. It was too dense and there were too many characters introduced at once

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

“In the darkness, I lay listening to the quiet street and distant sirens. In London, no matter where you live there are always sirens at night. I thought of the scenes the police were being called to, the people being raced to the hospital in the backs of ambulances. I thought of all the games no longer being played. Of all the games gone wrong.”

This book was a perfect plot line of mystery, intrigue, and betrayal. If you enjoy Tana French, you will love this book. Thank you to Netgalley for an advance copy.

123 pages into the book and I made the decision to give up on it. I just couldn't spend any more time on this story that seemed so pointless. Andy is all over the place between David and Marcus. And her search of best friend Peter disappearance doesn't seems to go anywhere. I read in the synopsis that this is the story of a group of friends.. I could not feel the friendship among those young folks. Not a single thing or character made me try to pull through. I am giving it a one star sine nothing impressed me about this book.

Thank you Net Galley and Henry Hold and Company for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I wrote about or featured this title on my blog and will provide the details directly to the publisher in the next round of this review process.

I felt like this was overwritten. Too many literary flourishes and not enough character development. I just didn't care about anyone so it wasn't enough to engage in the writing.

When Andy is told that her childhood friend Peter is missing, she decides to play detective to find him. While unearthing clues about his present whereabouts, she finds herself thrust back to their childhood.

A group of teenagers find a stranger on the run camped out at an unoccupied Manor and quickly envelope him into their group of misfits. Local legend tells a story of the Manor, a mysterious death, a stolen necklace. The group begins to play a game, reenacting the the legend bit by bit.

One day the stranger vanishes and the game ends, only to be brought back years later. After a hunting party, turns hunting accident, the group finds themselves reunited with the stranger and his new friends and the game is brought back into play, only this time, the game resembles more of the legend that anyone planned.

This is a story of the past coming back to haunt you, of unfinished business and undiscovered treasure. A very interesting read, beautifully written.

The one draw back is that there are so many threads that not all of them weave together into a satisfying ending. 3.5 Stars

Victoria Gosling's debut novel has some great characters and excellent prose but was way too slow to hold my interest for very long. The multiple timelines were easy enough to follow but I thought the story kind of meandered without direction at times.

This book is very difficult to describe but I enjoyed it. However, I found it very slow and difficult to get into and lost track of the timelines and characters easily. Thank you so much for my advanced copy.

From debut author Victoria Gosling comes BEFORE THE RUINS, a dark, multilayered gothic mystery set in and around a ruinous manor, filled with forgotten crimes and the dreams of four young people.

The year is 1996, and teens Andy, Peter and Em are best friends, drinking cheap beer, smoking hash and playing childhood games in a deserted manor house with a sordid history. Accompanying them and helping them bridge the gap to the adult world is Marcus, Andy’s boyfriend, who not only drives Andy and her friends around in his van, but helps Andy get a job with his uncle Darren. Though they have plenty to do around town, in school and preparing for adulthood, Andy focuses the group’s interest on a mystery.

Years earlier, an expensive diamond necklace was stolen from the manor, and though a suspect was found (dead, inconveniently), the necklace has never been located, and rumor has it that it is still hidden in the manor or on its grounds. The game is childish, certainly, but for Andy it is all-important. Her mother is unwell, neglectful and often mean, and she keeps warning Andy that the apocalypse is near. Andy doesn’t believe her mother, not exactly. The end of her world as she knows it is approaching rapidly: Peter will be going to Oxford soon, Em will be off to study and make art, and she doesn’t feel the all-encompassing love for Marcus that could allow her to feel secure in their future together.

And then a boy turns up at the manor. David is charming, handsome (but not unbearably so) and mysterious. He tells Andy and her group that he is doing a runner, having accidentally stolen from a teacher on a school trip, and is hiding out in the manor, which belongs to his friend’s family. There are holes in his story, but he adds a sense of mystery and mayhem to the already noteworthy summer. Before long, Andy realizes that she is in love with him. But so is Peter. As the five young men and women hunt for the missing necklace and make plans for their futures, lines are crossed, secrets traded and trusts betrayed. Before they realize it, David goes missing and the group moves on, forever changed by that summer.

When we meet Andy again, she is an adult, and though she still sees Peter from time to time, the group they once loved has fallen apart. Still, it is a shock to Andy when she gets a call from Peter’s mother and learns that he has been missing for at least four weeks. As Andy tries to find him, she revisits that disastrous summer and everything that came after it, asking herself how well she ever really knew Peter --- or any of them, for that matter, including herself.

Jumping between the past, present and everywhere in between, Andy starts looking for Peter, certain that there are clues to his disappearance that she missed along the way. But her search becomes far more introspective than she expected, as she dives into her most painful memories, group fights she ignored and love triangles she didn’t realize existed. It is almost as though Peter’s disappearance takes the backburner, with Andy’s hunt for the truth --- all truths --- taking the lead.

As a mystery, BEFORE THE RUINS is fairly predictable, though no less engrossing for it. Gosling handles the gothic, the tragic and the unexplainable well, often tackling multiple storylines at once and weaving them together for a grand reveal. But the book is not only --- or even mostly --- a mystery. It is much more an examination of adulthood and the disappointments that come with it. Andy’s journey from rough-and-tumble teen to sought-after professional is both shocking and painfully familiar, and I have no doubt that her ennui will resonate with readers of a certain age. Combining the real mysteries at the heart of the book with the all-encompassing, unsolvable mystery of adulthood makes this novel heady and dreamy, much more than your average English mystery.

Although I enjoyed the general plot and found much to love about the characters, especially Andy, I was often distracted by the writing. Gosling’s prose is poetic in style, and though there were several lovely passages, I often found myself distanced from the heart of the book trying to figure out what she was saying. There were times when I was not sure who was speaking --- an important fact in a group of five! --- and I had to reread sections to be sure. I would read another novel by Gosling, but I’d like to see her try her hand at something less plot-based and more character-driven, for that is where she truly shines.

2.5 stars I love a Gothic mystery, but, for me, this just wasn't it. I didn't feel the characters were flushed out well, they were just superficial. While this one had a good premise, it ultimately failed to deliver. The storytelling was wordy and at times, confusing. I'm not sure if I would read another book by this author.

**Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley in exchange of an honest review.**

In “Before the Ruins” by Victoria Gosling we see a story that brings together four “friends” as they spend their summer at a deserted manor. When they hear a story about a diamond necklace gone missing at the manor some fifty years ago, they set out to find it and create their own version of a treasure hunt. But there are more secrets and lies then any of them could imagine hidden within the grounds of the manor. And as they unravel decades later no one is prepared for the fallout.

I received this book through NetGalley and this is my honest review.

This book was very difficult for me to get into, and in the end I was not able to make myself finish it. It is a slow build kind of thriller, which ordinarily I would rather enjoy, but it's also very atmospherically depressing. Effective writing! But not the kind I am able to make myself read at present.