A.K. Vande Vorde

If you were offered the chance to be remembered forever, would you be willing to sacrifice everything?

If twenty-three-year-old Camilla Farrow’s life were a theatrical play, she would be in the audience. But one summer night, she witnesses two young men dressed in Victorian costumes escaping down a manhole in an empty Boston alleyway at midnight. Curious and captivated, Camilla finally takes back her agency and does something she never would have done before: She follows them.

Camilla is pulled into the world of the Boston Revolutionary Art and Teacup Society, a secret society of eccentric artists and actors who live in an underground limestone fortress—an eighth Natural Wonder of the World that no one knows about but them. Enraptured by the fascinating, secluded world of the Boston Rats, Camilla eagerly leaves everything behind to start a different life under a new name: Lily.

She befriends the Society’s colorful members, including witchy pink-haired Ixxy, wholesome and soft-spoken Rowan, arrogant but jealous Casanova, and quick-witted yet emotionally detached Sparrow. But beneath the midnight tea parties, the theatrical performances, and the bardic battles lies something more sinister. Atticus, the leader of the Boston R.A.T.S., offers to mentor her with the promise that she will achieve artistic brilliance and be remembered forever—at the cost of her inhibition, sanity, and possibly even human lives . . . including her own.

And Camilla is so entranced that she may just accept.
 

Fans of “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt and “If We Were Villains” by M.L. Rio will enjoy this read.