Lux: when they get what they want and they never want it again

Seventeen years old and stuck in the sprawling suburbs of Country Hills, Lux decides she will never be able to hear the truth if she doesn't first plug her ears. Secretly dropping out of private school, using her kilt and tie as a disguise to remain under the radar of her distant father, Lux gets a job at a coffee shop, appointing her co-worker, Bianca from public school, as her partner in crime.

As Lux drags Bianca around the city, gingerly stepping over boundaries she's been told never to cross, she encounters Ari, a construction worker with a dark side. Readily trading in her boredom for Ari's allure, Lux's identity begins to blur as he gets into her head. Raised as a prep school overachiever, Lux is dead set on deciphering Ari. But in following her intrigue, what exactly is Lux defying?

*****

Review: Booklover, France August 29, 2021
Painful, but oh so fascinating

(translated from French)
**spoilers

With sharp and precise writing, Isla Kay gives us the story of a young woman whose relationship with the wrong guy will lead her astray.

When Lux meets Air, she's bored. Fascinated by his beauty and confidence, he awakens something inside her.

"When I'm with Ari, I feel like my life is happening to me. Whether good or bad - it's just nice to feel. When I lose him, I disappear."

It's fascinating and maddening to see Lux's life spiral out of control after they break up, until they get back together, again and again. It's about mind control. He makes her second guess herself and she tries to please him, confused about what she did wrong. I think he knew she was socially out of his league and pushsed her angrily away, while getting her back each time she reached out for him.

"I hear, through his reprimanding, a slice of panic in his words. He's scared to lose me - trying to convince me into staying."

From the middle of the novel, the text is interspersed with quotes from a book someone lends Lux about toxic love, which perfectly attunes with her situation, but she does not follow the lessons it teaches as her constant anxiety is intoxicating.

I could never understand this kind of love, but Isla Kay made me feel for Lux and see how it slowly destroyed her.