The Ruin by Samantha Moran

*Second Place Winner of The BookFest® Awards, Fall 2023: Urban Fantasy*

Every family has secrets. Some are deadlier than others.

For two years, twenty-one-year-old Kara Edwards has struggled to keep her mother alive after a terminal cancer diagnosis. She's working herself to the bone at a minimum-wage job and sinking deep into debt to pay for expensive treatments. Unfortunately, when the final procedure does not go according to plan, she’s run out of options. Her world teeters on the brink of collapse as she faces the reality that her mother is out of time. That is until her mother’s doctor offers Kara one more option, an expensive and illegal experimental drug called Novemion.

To make matters worse, her absent father is suddenly back in town, and he’s brought an unbelievable family secret with him, one that presents Kara with the strangest of opportunities. If his stories are true, she might be able to save her mother’s life with a dangerous supernatural ability, but it would put the whole of humanity at risk.

Once again, Kara is faced with an impossible choice, and each comes with a steep price. She can place her hope in the untested experimental treatment, give into the temptation of the mythical family secret and risk millions of lives, or allow the mother she idolizes to die.

What will she choose, and can she live with the consequences?