Mia
A Novel
-
- Pre-Order
-
- Expected Aug 11, 2026
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
A stylish, unsettling work of psychological suspense about an American woman, adrift in Mexico for a year, whose chance encounter with a glamorous older expat spirals into obsession and betrayal.
There’s no one, there’s only you.
When Sally, an American living in San Miguel de Allende, meets Louise outside her children’s school, she’s eager to immerse herself more deeply in the life of the city. In Mexico for just a year with her husband, an architect, Sally is entranced by Louise—her elegance, her harshness, her stories about Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac—and the two quickly become inseparable. Soon enough, Louise has begun calling her Mia and, at first playfully, then in earnest, introducing Sally as her daughter to a growing circle of friends.
By turns enthralled with the possibility of a new identity in Mexico and troubled by Louise’s magnetic hold over her, Sally attempts to keep the relationship a secret from her husband. As the specter of Sally’s troubled childhood looms, and Louise’s self-mythologizing tightens its grip, the two women test the limits of reinvention—until their fictions threaten the security of Sally’s flesh-and-blood family.
A taut, beguiling work of psychological suspense, Mia is a mother-daughter story turned on its head and a high-intensity fable about the limitations of playing a role that doesn’t belong to you.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two American expats in a picturesque Mexican city forge an exciting and dangerous bond in Bazzett's nuanced and unsettling debut. The narrative focuses on Sally, who recently moved to San Miguel de Allende with her architect husband, Tom, and their two kids, prickly second grader Ida and sweet-natured kindergartner Henry. With little to do, and always on the lookout for someone to replace the mother who abandoned her as a child, Sally becomes fascinated with Louise, a glamorous and haughty older woman for whom she feels "an almost primitive attraction." Louise appears to be equally smitten, and the two are soon spending days together swimming, talking, and drinking. When Louise introduces Sally to her friends as Mia, and implies that she is Mia's mother, Sally goes along with it, as well as with Louise's proposal that she leave Ida with her most afternoons. As their lives become ever more entwined, Sally hides their relationship from Tom, a move that threatens their marriage and ultimately their children. In measured beats, Bazzett explores the dark side of indulging in fantasies, however benign. It amounts to a singular take on the folie à deux that leaves the reader pondering the nature of obsession and the line between fate and free will.
