Chateau Reverie
At Château Reverie, guests bid at auction for the chance to have their greatest desire fulfilled. For Genevieve de Vienne, that desire is to forget the woman she loved, who sacrificed herself to make good Genevieve’s escape from revolutionary France. Genevieve allies with another guest, Leander Sterne, who does not remember ever having been outside the Château. It soon becomes clear that this is because Leander has been trapped inside it for so long that he’s become part of the odd and seemingly omnipotent family that controls the house and manages the auction.
The auction will take place after three nights in the Château, a dreamlike reality where the only hard rules seem to be the ones imposed on the guests. Their presence is required at all social events. They may not lie. And when the time comes for the auction, they must place their bids in a very personal currency—their secrets.
The dreamworld of the Château is well-built, an ever-shifting architecture of whimsical dread. This reverie extends to the characters’ point-of-view minds; their incomplete memories pull the reader along into a narrative fog as dangerous as it is pleasant. As we root for Genevieve and Leander—and ourselves—to escape the Château, there is always a sense that the rug is going to be pulled out from under us, or perhaps just magically roll us up to be trapped there forever. A nicely placed twist raises the stakes just in time to propel the story to a satisfying conclusion.
