I spent the vast majority of this book with my brow furrowed and my mind spinning.

What is going on?

That was the question on loop through every chapter — even the ones I read half-asleep, telling myself that one more chapter was all I needed to make the pieces click into place.

Gwen is lonely, even among her friends and neighbors in the beautiful Columbia Mansions. So when a young subletter named Pixie moves across the hall, Gwen is delighted. Pixie is bright and warm and a breath of fresh air. But something seems a little … off. The more Gwen sees and overhears, the more certain she becomes that something is wrong between Pixie and her landlord, Alec.

So Gwen does what protective people do: she gets involved.

What follows is a domestic drama narrated entirely by Gwen— and author Louise Candlish gives her layers to spare. There’s the guilt over a friendship she let down. A disastrous ex-husband. A fraught relationship with her children. A bank account that is more fragile than she lets on. Gwen throws herself into Pixie’s defense with the kind of conviction that belongs to people who have spent a long time with nowhere to put it — and that’s when things start to fall apart.

The harder she tries to help, the faster everything unravels.

This is psychological suspense that lives and breathes in the uncomfortable spaces between assumptions and facts, between protection and control, between what we think we know about someone and what’s actually true. Candlish layers in questions of social status, intergenerational friendship, housing politics, and the particular danger of a good intention. There’s a final act that shifts the ground entirely — I won’t say more than that.

My only caveat: there were stretches where the fog felt thicker than the story required, where “What is going on?!” tipped from enjoyable tension into mild frustration. For a reader who likes at least one handhold on the way down, this one asks you to free-fall a little longer than comfortable.