The house is floodlit, the crystal glasses are ready, the waiters and maids are lined up. A delicate Chanel dress lies on the bed. Eugenia is late for her father’s birthday: and she knows full well that celebrations for Paolo De Gasperis, a prominent Milanese entrepreneur, are not ordinary occasions. She enters the house in a hurry, and then she stops, taken aback: the drawing room is empty of guests.

The news came a few days ago: the De Gasperis company’s huge building site has been seized, and Paolo has been charged with serious offences. Lucy, his wife, is devastated: she can already see their assets confiscated, the family ruined.

But Eugenia does not know that everything is changing. She doesn’t want to know. Because not long ago, at university, she met Tobias, the first boy who’s ever made her feel intelligent, straightforward, real. He’s half German and has lived in Milan for a few months. He’s far removed from the glittering world in which she has grown up: He doesn’t know about luxuries or parties at the villa, and in Eugenia he sees a depth she didn’t know she had. Together—on their late-night strolls and stolen afternoons they should have spent studying—they discover an unexpected city, made up of cloisters and country roads off the beaten track. But perhaps dreams cannot last. Eugenia will return home, once and for all, to stand by her family. And she will have to decide the destiny of her newly found love.

Ottaviano has written a real page-turner, a book that tells of desire and fear as we experience them today.

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Giulia Ottaviano was born in 1987 in Cittadella, Padua, and grew up in Rome, Catania, and Milan, where she still lives. She attended the Scuola Holden writing school in Turin and in 2009 was selected for the writing competition Le Prove d’Autore di Esor-dire in Bologna. This is her first novel.