Meet the Winters, a wealthy, beautiful, fashionable family whose ancestor made a deal with the devil to secure power(s) for herself and her descendants. Cicely, the POV character, has a strained, to put it mildly, relationship with her mother Allegra. Cicely is able to connect to the Ruin, a dark magical realm, by using an insect as a conduit and her connection becomes stronger but more fraught when she discovers that Soren, a boy her family murdered four years earlier lives on in the Ruin. Even more fraught is her reluctant acceptance of the love she feels for him despite his vow to destroy her family.

Blending romance, mystery, fantasy and the perpetually popular trope that rich people are terrible, Foxfield has created a fast-paced, if uneven, romp through the exploits of the billionaire class. The characters are so relentless it’s hard to say whether they even need the gifts delivered through the ancestral Faustian bargain; one can picture them succeeding in wealth, though perhaps not happiness, just fine on their own. This YA dark fantasy will be popular with fans of The Inheritance Games, or any reality TV show in which everyone looks fabulous all the time (there is a lot of sartorial detail). It’s worth noting that the book has beautiful sprayed edges with a dragonfly motif.

Reviewed by Sarah Maciejewski, Patten Free Library, Bath