A smart story about consent, control, and the courage to speak out.
It’s summer for the children of Paris’s elite, so sun-drenched days and party-filled nights in exclusive destinations await Manon de Rochemaure and her classmates. Better still, captivating Étienne Servan has invited Manon and other affluent teens to his family’s private island near Ibiza. For Manon, Étienne’s pull is nearly irresistible, but her parents forbid the trip, leaving her behind in a Paris that feels deserted. Even as she pines for Étienne and his island, Manon grows close to Anaïs, a young woman who opens Manon’s eyes to a startling kind of freedom, one that stems from self-possession rather than wealth or reputation. Manon’s eighteenth birthday comes and goes, summer draws to a close, and the teens return from the island, bringing Étienne back into her life. Their relationship, however, moves in directions Manon isn’t always comfortable with. “No means no” might be an empowering slogan, but it carries little weight when a well-connected boy’s reputation is on the line. In fact, Manon’s firm “no” is recast instead as an attack, one that paints her as the predator rather than the victim. Shipped off to a Swiss boarding school to preserve appearances, this scorned daughter of privilege is no longer content to smile and obey. Bolstered by new friends, scandalous information, and a sharpened sense of justice, Manon de Rochemaure refuses to let the Servan family’s dirty little secrets remain hidden.
Readers don’t need to enjoy a life of indulgence to deeply feel the emotional impact of a caged young woman’s struggles with control and agency in a world built to protect a privileged few. Weighty topics and thematic elements only serve to amplify the emotional depth and psychological tension in Re:claim. A timely and timeless LGBT thriller, this thoughtful sapphic novel explores desire, vulnerability, guilt, transparency, honesty, inheritance, expectation, silence, and accountability. The prose is heady and evocative, though the author leans heavily on a particular device: grounding a specific physical detail in an unrelated abstraction. Quite clever in moderation, it becomes a distracting affectation when used frequently throughout the book. Still, the novel succeeds in creating a space for audiences to experience a range of feelings. One example is the way in which each scene is given its own gravity. A kiss with Étienne is rough and rushed, pulsing with youthful urgency, while a kiss with Anaïs carries longing, discovery, and sensuality. What could read similarly instead lands as two wonderfully different sensations. A smart story about consent, control, and the courage to speak out, Re:claim is a revenge thriller that rewards patience and never once forgets to ask.
