Dead Girls Make The Best Muse

Imagine you have everything.

Money - actually, an excruciating amount of money. A mansion with more rooms than you could ever possibly use. Employees who are ready to fold themselves in four just to make your life slightly more convenient. A wardrobe you could never wear your way through. Chauffeurs waiting outside. Expensive dinners, summer nights by the lake, parties that last until sunrise, and friends whose last names are worth billions.

You live in Velgrave, after all.

The kind of place where everyone knows your name before you've even introduced yourself. Where the houses look like palaces, the schools are impossibly prestigious, and a single invitation can determine whether you're important or completely irrelevant. Where everyone is beautiful, everyone is wealthy, and everyone seems to know exactly what they're doing.

It sounds perfect.

So why do you feel so fucking miserable?

Crystal Le Roy doesn't know either.

Six years ago, she arrived in Velgrave with nothing but her mother, a few suitcases, and the overwhelming certainty that her life was about to change forever. She was right. All she had to do was learn how to belong.

And Crystal was willing to do anything to belong. But Velgrave has never been kind to people who don't understand its rules.

Nobody knows exactly what happened.

Yet.

All we know is that there is something buried beneath those expensive dresses, perfect family photographs, and fake smiles. Something Crystal would rather take to her grave than see printed across the front page.

But that's the thing about Velgrave. Nobody takes anything to the grave here.

Not when there are friends willing to betray you, families willing to sacrifice you for their reputation, and enough money floating around to make almost anyone forget their morals.

And Crystal?

She's got plenty of people waiting for her to slip.

So pour yourself a drink, darling.

You've got front-row seats to the most beautiful disaster in Bartholomew Vale . . .