The bewitching first novel from the bestselling author of THE IMMORTALISTS

'Benjamin is a gifted writer, a creator of quiet asides and haunting images' Financial Times

'Matches the subtle surrealism of a dream with the underpinnings of a thriller' Emma Straub

'You wonder if here is a writer who is truly capable of anything' Daily Mail

Sylvie and Gabe meet and fall in love at boarding school in Northern California when they are just teenagers. Their headmaster is the enigmatic and mysterious Dr Keller, a man obsessed with the idea that people's waking stress and trauma can be cured in their dreams. The young couple can't help but be drawn into his magnetic pull and slowly become involved in his research.

Years later, Sylvie and Gabe are once again working on Dr Keller's experiments and Sylvie slowly begins to realise there is more both to her employer and her lover than meets the eye, and that the line between dreams and reality has become dangerously blurred.

"A moving love story wrapped in the trappings of a sci-fi thriller. Benjamin has a deft hand for rendering both the stomach-twisting nature of early infatuation and the way relationships mellow over time. Sentences have a dreamy rhythm. A sly, promising, and ambitious debut" - Publishers Weekly

"Chloe Benjamin's prose - lyrical, tender, perceptive - compels you to linger on every exquisitely crafted sentence" - Sunday Express

"Benjamin is a gifted writer, a creator of quiet asides and haunting images, who mines a seam of sad wisdom" - Financial Times

"Such is her dazzling sureness of touch that you wonder if here is a writer who is truly capable of anything" - Daily Mail