A sophisticated and conversation-starting novel of modern love, sexual violence, and toxic inheritance from a brilliant new literary voice

“Gripping . . . shines an unflinching light on trauma and its prismatic impact. A deeply necessary book.”—Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure

When Kate Quaile meets Max Rippon in the first week of university, so begins a life-changing friendship.

Over the next four years, the two become inseparable. For him, she breaks her solitude; for her, he leaves his busy circles behind. But knowing Max means knowing his family: the wealthy Rippons, all generosity, social ease, and quiet repression. Theirs is a very different world from Kate’s own upbringing, and yet she finds herself quickly drawn into their gilded lives, and the secrets that lie beneath. Until one evening, at the Rippons home, just after graduation, her life is shattered apart in a bedroom while a party goes on downstairs.

What Red Was is an incisive and mesmerizing novel about power, privilege, and consent—one that fearlessly explores the effects of trauma on the mind and body of a young woman, the tyrannies of memory, the sacrifices involved in staying silent, and the courage in speaking out. And when Kate does, it raises this urgent question: Whose story is it now?