Us In Ruins

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Author(s)
Publisher
Age Range
13+
Release Date
September 03, 2024
ISBN
978-0063284685
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Margot is on the quest to uncover and reassemble an ancient—and cursed—vase, with the help of a boy who went missing in 1932, because it's the only way to put back together her broken heart in this standa-lone adventure rom-com, perfect for fans of What the River Knows and The Lost City.
The mythical Vase of Venus Aurelia hasn’t been seen since 1932, but Margot Rhodes is determined to change that.

Drawn by the vase’s supposed magical properties, Margot embarks on her school’s archaeological trip to Pompeii. Sure, it’s her first time holding a shovel, but she’s got something no one else does: lost teenage explorer Van Keane’s journal.

Poring over the poetic entries that serve as a map to the vase’s missing shards, Margot finds herself falling in love with the boy who wrote it a century ago. She’s shocked when her search leads her to a statue that looks exactly like Van, and then the statue comes to life.

Catapulted into the present, Van is nothing like the wordsmith Margot imagined. He’s all sharp edges, intent on retrieving the relic for all the wrong reasons. But it takes two to survive Venus’s death-defying challenges, and, together, Margot and Van must excavate the treasure—and their buried pasts—before their story ends in ruins.

With a blend of humor, magic, and love, Rachel Moore crafts another stand-alone adventure rom-com full of double- and triple-crosses, hilarious shenanigans, and frustration-fueled banter, where the best treasure is true love.

Editor review

1 review
Explorer Adventure plus Cute Romance
Overall rating
 
4.3
Plot
 
4.0
Characters
 
4.0
Writing Style
 
5.0
Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)
 
N/A
An ode to the girls who want to be everything when they feel like nothing, and to all the girls who thought they'd like archaeology more without the dirt and spiders.

Margot Rhodes joins her high school’s summer archaeology excursion to Italy, hoping to uncover lost treasure like the Vase of Venus Aurelia or her own true passion (she’s tried everything, but so far nothing’s stuck). A few days later and already in over her head, she stumbles across a hidden ruin, awakens an explorer-who-was-turned-to-stone, and finds herself partnering up with a very disgruntled Van Keane, the last explorer to have seen the Vase and the owner of the journal Margot uncovered in her school’s library.

This story takes off running and never lets up. By the end of the first chapter, I was swimming in so many wonderful questions about Margot, the possibly-magical-artifacts, and how a girl who qualified for a research trip based on her ability to write fanfiction would stand her ground with second and third-generation archaeologists.

Although I generally avoid contemporary, I really enjoyed the balance of lyrical writing and modern flair. Margot’s arsenal of pop references are effortlessly casual, whether in a hotel or a collapsing temple, and it’s easy to picture her as a real person. I made a face at some of her pointed sociological remarks, but they were few and far between.

Like many adventures, it does require some questions to be set aside. Like, would there really be ancient ruins that no one has rediscovered in a hundred years? Or, is it that easy to abscond overseas and adopt a stranger into a summer study program? Maybe probably not, but we’re not here to take everything totally seriously, and the over-the-top nature of Margot and Van’s shenanigans in Italy are right in line with the treasure-hunting, dungeon-searching genre.
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