{"product_id":"the-verre-retreat-luca-de-9798249952761","title":"The Verre Retreat: A Slow Burn Horror Romance: A Dark Wellness Horror Romance","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eShe unscrewed the lid. The scent hit her first - marine, but not the synthetic kind. This was organic. Complex. Alive-smelling, if that was a term.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eShe dipped her finger in. The serum vanished into her skin as though the tissue had drawn it in. Not passively, the way skin absorbed a moisturiser. Actively. The way a dry sponge pulled water.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eShe had never felt a topical product behave like that. In twenty-five years, across thousands of formulations, she had never encountered a compound that the skin appeared to want.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eShe held the jar up to the light. The serum was pale, almost colourless, with a faint iridescence that shifted as she tilted it. It looked like captured light. It looked like something that had never seen the inside of a manufacturing facility.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"I don't know what this is,\" she said. Which was, in her professional life, the most exciting and the most dangerous sentence she could utter.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDr. Cat Ashworth has spent twenty-five years as one of the most respected cosmetic chemists in the industry. She knows, at a molecular level, exactly what a skincare product can and cannot do. So when her closest friend returns from an exclusive coastal wellness retreat looking a decade younger - with skin that should not be possible - Cat doesn't book herself in to enjoy it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe books in to find out what they're putting on people's skin.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Verre Retreat is beautiful, isolated, and run by the brilliant Dr. Sylvaine Morrow, a woman who has apparently cracked the secret to genuine cellular renewal. The treatments work. The results are real. The clients are devoted. And not a single product label carries a legal ingredient list.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCat arrives with a portable spectrometer in her luggage and a professional instinct that something is deeply wrong. What she discovers in the locked rooms beneath the retreat's glass-and-stone exterior is more disturbing than anything she imagined, a living organism harvested in the dark, a supply chain built on biological horror, and a founder who committed monstrous acts for a shortcut she never needed to take.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe also discovers Marcus Hale. The architect who designed the retreat. The man who noticed her scar-tapping before he noticed her eyes. The one person inside the building who is, quietly, asking the same questions she is.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCat didn't come to the Verre Retreat to fall for someone. She came to understand the impossible chemistry. But somewhere between the locked corridors and the bioluminescent tanks and the evidence she is building case by careful case, she finds herself trusting a man who pays attention the way she pays attention to the structures hidden behind the visible surface.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe is not going to just expose what is happening here.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe is going to replace it with something better.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWellness Retreat Horror\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSlow Burn Romance\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStrong Female Protagonist Over 40\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCompetence-Driven Thriller\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDark Beauty Industry Secrets\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAtmospheric Gothic Horror\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEnemies to Allies to Lovers\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMidlife Heroine\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCoastal Setting\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEldritch Parasitic Horror\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eProfessional Woman Romance\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Luca De\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798249952761\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/26\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 382\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.12lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.85d","brand":"Luca De","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":49172273856767,"sku":"9798249952761","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-verre-retreat-luca-de-9798249952761","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}