Her Life in Ruins: A Novel

A laugh-out-loud, friends–to–lovers rom com set in Silicon Valley and the Yucatán Peninsula, about a hard–partying archaeologist, her grad school love interest, and a high–stakes heist.

Life as she knew it is ancient history. 

Brilliant but a train wreck, Catherine Saunders is this close to getting her PhD in archaeology from Stanford. All she needs to do is finish her dissertation and then everything she’s endured over the past six years—summer digs in sweltering rainforests, comically disastrous hookups, and bloated student loan balances—will be worth it. 

Then the subject of her dissertation, a priceless Maya artifact, is stolen. With the help of her enigmatic research partner, Yolandra, and her very attractive, very exasperating fellow grad student, Nick, Catherine traces the stolen vase to a notorious antiquities forger in Mexico. It’s only a matter of time before it disappears forever . . . along with Catherine’s entire academic career. 

Unless she steals it back. 

On a trip to the Yucatán littered with pampered tourists and greedy collectors, Catherine’s closest ally is Nick, whose sincerity and principles are nearly as unhelpful as her growing attraction to him. Will she risk her integrity to achieve her dreams? Or will her ambitions (and love life) end in a tank of cheap wine and bad decisions? 

For fans of The Love Hypothesis and Really Good, Actually, Her Life in Ruins is a wry, propulsive novel of friends-to-lovers tension and all the reckless, overly ambitious, desperately horny glory of womanhood.