Vivienne Holloway has been reading rooms since she was old enough to stand in them. She arrives at Hargrove, Vance and Associates, a high-end Manhattan law firm, as one of four interns competing for a single permanent job: sharp, controlled, and practiced at reading a room before her expression moves, a skill she learned surviving her mother.

What none of her rivals know is the complication she carries into the building. Her connection to one of the firm's partners, and the mother in the background who has never stopped arranging the lives around her. Vivienne learned young that you could feel the floor dropping out from under you and still look like you were standing on solid ground, that you just had to decide which one mattered more, and she has been making that decision ever since. This is the room she did not see coming.

A quiet, adult story about ambition, attraction, self-protection, and the things people choose not to say, written for readers of literary contemporary fiction and slow-burn workplace drama. 492 pages.

Contains adult content.