Stargazer: VERVE BOOKS

It is the fall of 1995 at Rocky Barrens University, hidden amidst the pine trees and starry skies of Northern Ontario. Aurelle Taylor, daughter of a world-famous fashion designer becomes the closest friend of burgeoning painter Diana Martin; they have bonded over a mutual desire to escape their wealthy families and personal tragedies and begin new lives as students at RBU.

They are closer than lovers, they are like one thing, intoxicated by their own bond, falling into the hedonistic seduction of the woods and the water at a university that is more summer camp than campus. Diana, who has lived her life under the shadow of her sadistic older brother, rockets to fame with a series of scandalous portraits of Aurelle, whose response is to tumble further into a drug-fueled escapism. Diana must choose whether to rescue her kindred spirit from destruction, or to abandon Aurelle for the fame she has forever thirsted after.

The lines between love, envy and obsession blur in Laurie Petrou's utterly enthralling, unceasingly tense second novel.