The Night Lagoon (UK) / Lime Juice Money (US)

Blurb

With the sultry atmosphere and ratcheting tension of The White Lotus, The Mosquito Coast, and Nine Perfect Strangers, this intoxicating, sensuous debut follows a woman trapped in an increasingly volatile relationship 5,000 miles from home in a Central American jungle.

A woman losing herself. A brutal relationship. And a jungle full of secrets.

When disaster strikes, hearing-impaired Laelia Wylde leaves London with her new partner, Aidrian, and her young children, hoping for a fresh start in the verdant jungle of Belize. There, she can be closer to her botanist father, get away from her sister, and maybe find a way to open the restaurant she’s always dreamed of.

While the jungle is mesmerizingly beautiful, it is also unforgiving and brutally hot, filled with deadly creatures and sinister magic. Laelia’s fragmented recollections of the past are increasingly bewildering, the gunshots she hears at night through her worsening tinnitus seem to be getting closer, and she still doesn’t understand why her father tried to turn her against Aid when they first met–though maybe she just misheard.

Uncovering long-buried secrets that threaten to derail everything, Laelia must somehow find the courage and resilience she needs to survive. Or is she destined to disappear into the shadows, like the orchid her father named her after?