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Decomposition Book

by Sara Van Os

A journal, a body, and a fraught new connection

Regular price $23.90 USD
Regular price $39.84 USD Sale price $23.90 USD
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Awards & Recognition

  • Critical praise

    Praise from Rachel Harrison

    Rachel Harrison praises the book as a slippery, profoundly beautiful, unhinged page-turner.

AlbakiReads Editorial

A journal, a body, and a fraught new connection

After a painful rupture with her best friend, Savannah withdraws to her parents’ empty lake house in upstate New York. Finding a dead woman in the woods, she turns to the journal beside the body instead of contacting the police. The account of Ava’s struggle to survive in the wilderness becomes a point of connection for Savannah, who is isolated and searching for someone to confide in. As the journal and Savannah’s present begin to overlap, the book brings together grief, loneliness, friendship, and the uncertain boundary between memory and the supernatural. Its premise links a wilderness survival story with a woman’s increasingly complicated attachment to the person whose life she is reading.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Adult readers interested in lesbian fiction and women’s relationships.
  • Readers who enjoy stories combining wilderness survival with supernatural uncertainty.
  • Readers drawn to fiction about loneliness, friendship, and a bond formed through a journal.

Themes

Loneliness and isolationFriendship and rejectionWilderness survivalGrief and supernatural uncertainty

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

"A slippery page-turner that's as profoundly beautiful as it is totally unhinged."
--Rachel Harrison, New York Times bestselling author of Play Nice and
So Thirsty

"Intense, irreverent, surprising, raw."
--Natalia Theodoridou, author of
Sour Cherry

An emotional, electrifying, and darkly hilarious debut about a woman who finds a dead body and can't give up its ghost, for fans of Mona Awad, Yellowjackets, and weird girl fiction.

Spiraling from a disastrous falling-out with her best friend, Savannah retreats to her parents' empty lake house in upstate New York to tend her wounds. Isolated and reeling from rejection, she spends her days in a fog, drinking and overthinking in equal worrisome measure. Until she wakes up one morning in the woods behind the house--next to a dead body.

Instead of calling the police, Savannah reads the journal she finds nearby, reliving the last desperate months of this woman's life lost in the wilderness, fighting for survival. Ava, as it turns out, is more than just a cold, lonely corpse. She was funny. She was smart. And Savannah has finally found someone she can talk to...

As she pushes deeper into Ava's harrowing story, Savannah notices a change, a shift in her reality. Each page brings her closer to the Ava from the journal...and the ghost before her now. Before long, Savannah feels something for Ava she hasn't felt for anyone else--and there's a good chance letting go would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Is Savannah finally losing her grip? Or has she found the friend she's needed all along?
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