Harlowe could use a break. With his academic future over, just like his relationship with Jackson, a suspiciously cheap summer rental on the Cape feels like just the escape he needs.

But when he arrives at the picturesque seaside cottage, he's alarmed to find his discouraging old professor in the living room, his father making coffee in the kitchen, a mysterious young man fixing a hole in the wall, and worst of all, Jackson is in the bathroom. None of them will leave. No one else can see them. And they just won't leave him alone.

But Harlowe soon realises he isn't the only one who can see the house's magic, and as the summer grows hot and thick with tourists, old wounds and fresh secrets – both in and outside its walls – begin to transform him. And that mysterious man seems almost to be everywhere he looks now... not that he'd want it another way.