Glass Houses by Francesca Reece

'Through a dewy sheen of teen nostalgia, Reece deftly explores the weight of political events on individual lives. Her supple, visceral prose evokes North Wales in all its complexity, beautifully rendered in water, resin and sky' Jessica Andrews, author of Saltwater and Milk Teeth
 
'Francesca Reece is a devastatingly compelling new voice in literary fiction' Louise O'Neill, author of Asking For It and Idol
 
Somewhere, in a box in Margot Yates' attic there's a video of Gethin by the lake at Ty Gwydr. He's young - nineteen, maybe twenty.

It's late spring and dusk, and a low sun leaks white light into the horizon behind the dark fringe of trees. Olwen is filming. Gethin narrows his eyes at the camera.

Her bodiless voice says to him, I love it here. He says, good. This place is ours.

Gethin Thomas is struggling to make ends meet in his rural hometown in north Wales. Bright and handsome but unambitious, he works as a forester, but the thing that keeps him going is Ty Gwydr, a beautiful lakeside house he keeps an eye on for its absent English owners. The house has been empty for so long he's come to think of it as his.

That is until the owners decide to sell, sending Geth into freefall. And when he discovers that Olwen, his teenage love who left him and their small town in north Wales for a new life in London, has returned with her husband, Geth and Olwen will find themselves pulled back into the past and what could have been - or still could be. But soon mysterious messages start arriving at the house, and Geth and Olwen must question whether this is the love story they thought it was, or whether there might be something altogether more sinister lurking beneath the surface.