BEFORE THE RUINS is Victoria Gosling's debut novel, and it's a very accomplished, assured one at that.

The novel follows a group of four friends: Andy, Marcus, Peter, and Em. When they were younger, they decided to spend a night at a mysterious, abandoned manor. While there, they meet David, who Andy and Peter come to be rather taken/fascinated by. The events of that night will end up echoing throughout the years to follow.

Gosling's prose is excellent. The characters are well-drawn, three-dimensional, and their interactions realistic and engaging. The plot is well structured and executed, and I was gripped from early on.

I can certainly understand the comparisons to Tana French and Donna Tartt, and if you're a fan of those two authors, then you should certainly give BEFORE THE RUINS a try. I enjoyed this, and am looking forward to reading whatever else the author comes up with in the future. Recommended.

This is a beautifully-written, atmospheric character study, coming of age story, and mystery. The writing reminds me somewhat of Tana French’s novels. The complicated relationships between the principal characters are well-developed and the sense of place throughout the story is nicely foreboding and sinister.

Andrea (Andy) is a girl from the rough part of town. Her daredevil actions and relationships are mostly motivated by anger. Her mother is an alcoholic, and her mother's boyfriend, Joe, is a dangerous man, bad news for Andy. Her only friend is the sensitive, bullied son of the local vicar, Peter. The two friends become exceptionally close throughout their difficult childhood. In later years, Marcus, the nephew of Andy's boss, and Em, a newcomer to town, join their small circle of friends. Their games center around the Manor, a dilapidated mansion little more than a ruin on the outskirts of town. Later in their teens, a boy on the run from prison joins them, shifting the group dynamic as both Andy and Peter fall in love with him. One morning after an evening scavenger hunt at the manor, Em is found dead in front of the house.

The repercussions on the group of friends from this event reach far into the future. The story, told from Andy's point of view, shifts timelines between the present day and the past as the events leading up to and following the tragedy gradually reveal themselves in the narrative. The characters are strong and the suspense builds nicely throughout. The novel's language is unusual, evocative, and poetic in places.

I loved the book and highly recommend it.

When Andy and her friends were teenagers, they ran around feeling free and playing games. Even into high school, she and Peter and Em and Marcus would create games for themselves, playfully dancing around or solving mysteries or telling stories.

Near their small town was a rundown manor. Once, it has been the home of posh socialites. Now it’s in disrepair and overgrown. As their time in school drew closer and closer to its end, Andy and her friends spent more time there. Before Peter was going off to Oxford, before Em went to art school. before Marcus and Andy went to work for Marcus’s uncle Darren full-time, they spent time together at the manor. That is where they met David.

David was a friend of the new owners of the manor. He was just a year or two older and, having run out on a school trip to Italy (where he may have liberated a teacher’s credit card and cash), now he’s squatting at the manor. The friends draw David into their favorite game, a game of hide and seek.

Back when the manor belonged to the rich couple, there was a snowy weekend where they invited friends for a couple of days of drinking and spending time together. But one weekend night, the lady of the house discovered that her diamond necklace was missing. The thief was discovered by the pond out back, his tracks in the snow showing he walked to the front gate (speculation was that he was to meet a conspirator, who would pick him up, but the snow made the road undriveable), and then to the back. He was found frozen on a bench, with his heart medicine in his hands. The necklace was never found, not on his body nor anywhere else his tracks had shown.

Em had found a replica of the necklace at the charity shop in town (the story had been big news across the area, and replica necklaces were made by the hundreds), and the teens would hide it and seek it out over and over. Meanwhile, both Peter and Andy found themselves attracted to David, but Andy was the one who won his heart. It was the last summer the friends had together, the only summer Andy had with David, and it changed all of them.

Now it’s many years later. Andy is grown and working in London when she gets the call from Peter’s mother. Peter didn’t call when he usually did that weekend, or the weekend before. Andy said she’d try to get ahold of him, and that’s when she finds out that no one has seen him for weeks.

Andy’s search for her childhood friend takes her back to her childhood, both to the manor and to the places she went to the manor to escape. Her journey is a reckoning of sorts, as she looks for her friend by exorcising all their former demons. But will Andy’s search for Peter put her and those around her in a danger that she can’t escape from?

Before the Ruins is a thriller about a search for a missing man, but it is also an atmospheric exploration of the choices we make as teenagers that stick with us for the rest of our lives. Author Victoria Gosling has crafted a story that is part coming of age, part coming to terms, that will infect your thoughts and your dreams and your conversations for weeks to come.

The book isn’t all that long for a thriller (less than 300 pages), but it feels like it’s twice as long. The emotional depth these characters go to and the powerful memories they uncover are weighty with a pathos that transcends story and characters. As I read it, I found myself thinking about Tana French’s In the Woods, and I honestly can’t think of a higher compliment than that. Gosling is masterful as a story teller, and she left me wrecked for days after finishing Before the Ruins. I can’t wrap my head the fact that this is her first novel. I can’t even begin to imagine where she will take us next.

Egalleys for Before the Ruins were provided by Henry Holt & Company through NetGalley, with many thanks.

I just couldn't get into the book. I tried to like it but I just found myself putting it down.

I really wanted to like this as it sounded intriguing but I DNF

The Mystery of a Dark Past: A Review of Victoria Gosling’s Before the Ruins
JANUARY 25, 2021 AT 7:00 AM BY KELLY ROARK
In Victoria Gosling’s “Before the Ruins,” five teenagers hung around a crumbling, abandoned manor house near Avebury, England, where a less-famous stone henge stands. The two girls and three boys half-heartedly searched for a diamond necklace that was lost decades before. The moody, gothic atmosphere enhances this very English mystery.

The girl that the small group looked to for approval and entertainment, Andy, has grown into a stable woman—a far cry from the abused and impoverished girl that found solace amongst her friends as a child. She’s also grown away from her friends—when Peter’s mother calls asking for her help to find him, she’s reluctant to get involved. She hints darkly about the past. “We’ve never really spoken about what happened at the manor. Not just… I mean all of it.” Poor Andy is trying to keep her bottled feelings locked deep down, but searching for Peter reminds her of her miserable youth, “When I was the rough kid with a kitchen-scissors haircut, hunched over my free school dinner.” Her friends provided a respite from her alcoholic mother and her abusive boyfriend, and “the game,” searching for the diamonds, was a pleasant way to wile away the hours, with the added fantasy that they’d be rich if they found them.

Gosling weaves easily between Andy’s youth and present-day Andy with her heels and financial security. The group of friends recalls that most-chased-after dream-group—the friends in Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History.” A chosen family for some, fierce and loyal, these friends provide what the world outside can’t and won’t. Unprotected at home, Andy feels safe with these friends, safe with their parents. At Emily’s house, a loving mother and sister provide a glimpse into another world. “Lady. Girl. Female. Woman. Each of the words made you feel a bit different, act a bit different, even, when it was applied to you. They weren’t the only words for us, of course, only at Em’s house it was possible to forget the other words existed.” Later she experiences the bounds of her gender even more profoundly.

As she stands in a dressing room, shopping for an outfit to impress, she looks in the mirror critically. “There was something archetypal about it. All those women, across the world—women in Paris and Moscow, Lagos and Sydney—women throughout time—at the court of Louis XIV, in Weimar Berlin, in sixties San Francisco—and all of them, having that moment, the moment of self-appraisal before their reflection. If the clothes passed the right code, if they accentuated what you had, if they disguised what you lacked: beauty, money, class, confidence, youth.” Gosling not only excels in writing a mystery steeped in British history, but a mystery of this woman—how did she overcome what happened to her as a child, how did she become this person she is now?

Before the Ruins
Victoria Gosling
Henry Holt & Company, 288 pages

This book is a debut novel by Gosling. It was beautifully written. I was either really distracted, or just could not concentrate on the plot of the story, but the detail was great.

Before the Ruins by Victoria Gosling is a coming-of-age mystery about Andy, her friends, and their search for a missing diamond necklace. The search is not as important as all the secrets that these friends have. This story was rather slow-going, but the writing was lovely. Here's a quote: "We grow up but the games go on. Work, relationships, belonging to a religion, being left or right, having a class or gender, or interests, a personality even, they all seemed like games begun long ago, far back among the mists of time, played ceaselessly, routinely, and with neither end nor prizes in sight. Each day, less convincing." I enjoyed the writing, but I wish there had been more of a focus on the various mysteries. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

This book was less of a mystery than a character study. It was a slow start for me, while many of the descriptions esp in hte beginning were lovely, it felt like too much description and not enough storyline. I did get involved in it and enjoyed it, but it was more of a slow burn

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

If you enjoyed Donna Tartt's The Secret History or Tana French's The Witch Elm, this book is for you. Beautifully written and plotted, engaging throughout, and a superb ending. Brava!

This was a bit hard to get into for me and took me a while. The book had almost a dreamlike quality in the recall, and a kitchen sink quality of story elements and I don't often connect well with either of those things. Too many threads to hold onto and most end up being unimportant.

Free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Before the Ruins had a good premise and a good general feel to it (very Donna Tartt), but after a lot of meandering, the story ultimately failed in its inability to reckon with its own plot.

This is a VERY slow build and has almost no major plot action until the halfway point. It lacks the eerieness and sense of menace for it to succeed as a true Gothic or Neo-Gothic novel, so the slow build ultimately mostly feels tedious. Still, I didn’t hate that component.

Gosling did well by her characters, making them nuanced and tangible if not exactly likable. So it’s unfortunate that the story they’re given doesn’t do them justice in the end.

The entire book builds on the premise that the mystery happening in the now must be connected to past events, but when we finally find out what ominously missing Peter has been up to, it’s a disappointment because it’s entirely unrelated. In other words: We spent an entire book soaking up this complex, winding backstory for nothing.

Did those past events shape Peter, sending him down the path he ultimately lands on? Probably. But the lack of any narrative connection between the two makes the whole lot feel like an exercise in futility for the reader.

It’s a pretty bleak, depressing story, and while I’m glad Andy found her version of a happy ending, the lack of payoff for all that harsh bleakness just doesn’t feel worth it.

Before the Ruins flips back and forth between present day and 20 years ago. We follow five friends who experience lies, betrayal, love, and death. In present day, Andrea (Andy) is searching for her missing friend, Peter and has to revisit old friendships along with the events that took place in the manor house.

When I first picked this up, I thought that this book was going to be about finding a hidden diamond necklace in a deserted manor house, but it's not the main focus. The story focuses more on the characters themselves rather than the mystery behind the treasure hunt. The first half of the book was extremely slow, and I didn't get invested into the story until certain things started happening about 60% of the way through. Around that time, the mystery starts unraveling and the pace of the story picks up a little.

This was marketed as a mystery/thriller, but I don't really think it's either. This is more of a slow burning, contemporary read. It's extremely character driven rather than a fast-paced, plot driven book. As long as you don't go into this book expecting a fast-paced thriller, you won't be disappointed! The writing is beautiful and poetic at times. I think I would've appreciated it more if I had known this book was character driven vs. plot driven. Overall, you will really love this one if you gravitate towards character driven stories or slow burning reads.

If you enjoyed the Secret History, Catherine House or Tana French, give this book a shot!

Thank you so much NetGalley for giving me a review copy of this book, but I was so excited to read it I ended up buying it first! This one was good, if not a bit odd. The writing was a little weird. Too flowery for my tastes. But the story was good and kept you engaged, even if the characters weren’t really likable. Very Donna Tartt.

I keep seeing this on must-read-lists and I don't get it. I did not enjoy it, but I do read the authors it was compared to. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

“Before the Ruins” is a debut mystery by Victoria Gosling. But the novel is also about coming to terms with the present and past. “Beneath the shiny life I’d built were ruins, and now I as among them.”

Our protagonist is an unmarried and childless Andrea (or “Andi”) who gets a call because her gay best friend, Peter, is missing. But the police aren’t yet involved. "My instinct was to cover for him," Andrea thinks, "only I didn't know what I was covering for." She attempts to find him and in doing so, revisits her past friendships from 20 years earlier as well as an unexpected death.

In just about every other chapter, we go back to a time to when Andi, Peter and their friends hung out for a summer. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll prevail at an abandoned manor. And the play a game that, unfortunately, ends in tragedy. Afterward, no one really talks about what happens, and no one knows who to blame. Andi has to figure out what happened that fateful day all while trying to find Peter in the present day.

Despite the rave reviews, it took me about 3 weeks to finish my advanced reader copy and that almost never happens. I just didn’t love the character development and dialogue, particularly the references to the game at the manor. Yes, there were secrets to uncover, but not exceptionally juicy ones. Even the unexpected death was a bit humdrum. Maybe I read too many glowing reviews and had high expectations? I heard it was a “page-turner of the highest order,” but obviously not for me. Maybe it would have been more compelling listening to audio so I could speed up the narrative?

Special thanks to Henry Holt & Company for the digital book, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

Some people have childhoods that leave them in ruins and it may take years for them to put themselves back together. This is a character study of someone like that. It all seemed just a little too long, almost catching fire and then not. There are murders and they are all solved, but that maybe doesn't fix things. We all have so many regrets. Worth reading, but you may have to be in the right place.

"A gripping, multilayered debut in the tradition of Tana French and Donna Tartt about four friends, an empty manor, and a night that will follow them for the rest of their lives.

It's the summer of 1996 and school's out forever for Andy, her boyfriend Marcus, her best friend Peter, and Em. When Andy's alcoholic mother predicts the apocalypse, the four teenagers decide to see out the end of the world at a deserted manor house, the site of a historic unsolved mystery. There they meet David - charming and unreliable, he seems to have appeared out of nowhere.

David presents an irresistible lure for both Andy and Peter and complicates the dynamics of their lifelong friendship. When the group learns that a diamond necklace, stolen fifty years ago, might still be somewhere on the manor grounds, the Game - half treasure hunt, half friendly deception - begins. But the Game becomes much bigger than the necklace, growing to encompass years of secrets, lies, and, ultimately, one terrible betrayal.

Meticulously plotted and gorgeously written, Before the Ruins is a page-turner of the highest order about the sealed-off places in our pasts and the parts of ourselves waiting to be retrieved from them."

Oh, 1996, just when I graduated high school! Sadly I never went to a manor house that lead to horrors and secrets... or did I?

I really tried to like this. I tried reading it three different times and I just couldn't do it. It was not at all enjoyable so I DNF

Overall, I found the writing in this one tough to chew. It feels like the atmosphere was the main focus; however, the plot just fell to the wayside.