Review: "Love in Ruins" by Auriane Desombre

Love in Ruins by Auriane Desombre
Published February 2026 via Delacorte Romance
★★★

It's the summer after grade nine, and Natalie is finally off to Greece—something she's been dreaming about for years. She's on a school-sponsored trip that will keep her in Greece for weeks: visiting ruins, island-hopping, trying new things...and maybe falling for someone?

This has something of a three-fold focus: First, of course, Greece. Second, there's a romance. And third, Natalie has recently been diagnosed with OCD, and a lot of her mental energy is spent responding to intrusive thoughts. Maybe a four-fold focus—there's also a bit of an academic competition (but I found it unrealistic, and for all the hype we barely know—and Natalie barely knows—what her project is, so I'm just going to...skip that part here). I read the book almost entirely for the setting (why is there not more YA that takes place in Greece?) and, admittedly, a little bit for the cover (which is gorgeous). And...this was fine, but it felt a bit lackluster.

Greece: The characters spend "half the summer" (I'm not sure how long this actually is, but we can assume weeks) traveling through Greece. They see a lot—but I never really felt like I was there, or that I'd learned much of anything about contemporary Greece. For example, they start in Athens...but it felt like moments later when they took off for the next place. Famous things are mentioned (e.g., the caryatid porch at the Acropolis), but then it's on to the next thing, and the next, and romance. And if they meet any Greek people other than Melanie in their many weeks in Greece, I sailed right over it. I know this sort of school trip can feel like something of a hit-and-run, but I much would have preferred, e.g., their trip to be based in just one city, with some day or maybe weekend trips farther out.

Romance: I love seeing queer YA, of course; queer travel YA is an added bonus. I don't think we ever know much about Melanie (or why she is drawn to Natalie), but she's nice and forthright. What I really don't love, though, is how so many of the characters are convinced that Natalie needs romance in her life. She's just finished her freshman year of high school—she's maybe fifteen. Could be fourteen. And while plenty of people are dating at that age, again, she's barely finished freshman year. When she tells her friends that she isn't ready to date at the moment, they act all disappointed, and this literal child gets even more convinced that she's not capable of romance. Where are the common-sense people telling her that it's fine to wait until she's ready, dating as a teenager is mostly practice and figuring relationships out, she doesn't need to have all the answers as a freshman? Because they're definitely not in her orbit.

OCD: Natalie has a recent OCD diagnosis that she's still coming to terms with. It's great to see mental health addressed in YA fiction, and I actually really like that one of the things Natalie is struggling with is just the idea of having OCD, of having a label attached to herself. Since the diagnosis, it feels to her like it's the only part of her that her parents see, and she's desperate to get out from under that. But it takes up a lot of space in the book, and I'm not sure how to feel about that. Because: Natalie's intrusive thoughts make sense...but then we get a lot of her breaking apart the intrusive thoughts, and thinking about how they're intrusive, and making it clear to the reader that they aren't just normal teenage/human getting-down-on-oneself thoughts. I'm torn, because on the one hand that could absolutely be part of somebody's intrusive thoughts—intrusive negativity followed by a sort of obsessive analyzing of the thoughts. On the other hand, though, it felt like it was mostly there for the reader's education, and I think I would have preferred more of that space to go to things like actually talking to Grecians, and learning odd facts about Greek and Greek history, and so on.

It's a very fast read—I read the entire thing in one day, spread over two 45-minute commutes and a little bit of reading over dinner. But I don't think it's one that will stick with me.