Give Me Everything You've Got: A Novel

by Imogen Crimp

Hot to the touch, a seductive modern gothic about a promising young filmmaker at a famous director’s summer home

In the midst of an unrelenting heat wave, up-and-coming filmmaker Ruby arrives at the summer home of her idol. Ellen, an iconoclastic feminist director known for mentoring other women, has offered Ruby a room of her own while she finishes her screenplay. Pitching Ruby as the next big thing, producers are clamoring for a “female story” mined from her past, and the deadline is fast approaching.

When Ruby arrives in the countryside, Ellen’s house emerges like something out of a dream—grand and imposing, surrounded by sprawling gardens and a shimmering swimming pool. But tension thrums beneath the picture-perfect surface. Ellen’s reputation is under fire after she’s accused of appropriating a story that wasn’t hers to tell. Meanwhile, Ellen’s mercurial daughter, Lara, lounges by the pool under the blistering sun, drawing her mother’s latest houseguest toward her like a moth to a flame.

As her aspirational summer of artistic retreat unravels, Ruby finds herself entangled in an all-consuming relationship, waiting for the heat to break. Even the house itself begins to feel haunted, and Ruby has the unnerving sensation that she’s not the first promising young woman to fall under its spell.

Hot to the touch, Imogen Crimp’s Give Me Everything You’ve Got is a spellbinding fever dream of a novel, exploring the dark corners of ambition, exploitation, and what it takes to be a woman artist.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Gothic, Adult, Literary Fiction

289 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 21, 2026

About the author

Imogen Crimp studied English at Cambridge, followed by an MA in contemporary literature at UCL, where she specialized in female modernist writers. After university, she briefly studied singing at a London conservatoire. She was born in 1989 and lives in London.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 1 out of 5]

well this gave me nothing.

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

[SJARR ✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I’m not sure this one was for me. I’m disassociating, which isn't my favorite feeling.

I think i'm running the risk of coming off as overly sensitive, but I was a little bit uncomfortable for most of this story.
Some of the topics discussed (and the way in which they were discussed), and some of the behavior by an older mentor toward her younger protégé, just, gave this an overall bad vibe for me.
I know that some of this has to be part of the point, but, I just wasn’t able to enjoy it.

I think the writing style is another place where we went a bit wrong.
I didn’t really feel immersed in the story, as much as I felt like I was watching stuff happen from a very far distance.
The synopsis does refer to this book as being like a “fever dream”, and I can certainly see that coming through. So, you might like this if you enjoy reading things like that.

As for the plot, I'm unsure about it.
I read this in full, but I didn’t really understand it.
I was confused, but I was fully expecting the end to have a massive turning point, or some type of revelation, to give me that “AHA!” moment.
It didn’t come though.

I am really not sure if this is just a case of my specific dislike for particular things plaguing my ability to enjoy a book as a whole, and perhaps it lead me to form a decision too quickly and I stuck with it.
Maybe other people would have an easier time grasping the plot, and would be able to like this more than I did.

Thank you to Netgalley, Henry & Holt Company and author Imogen Crimp, for providing me with the eARC of "Give Me Everything You've Got", in exchange for my honest review!
Publication date: July 21, 2026

[Claire Fuller]

This feels like horror without the horror. It's a long hot summer and Ruby has been invited to stay in film director, Ellen's country house for a couple of weeks. There she meets Lara, Ellen's daughter. Crimp is so good at describing the heat, the hazy days, all the unsaid things and insinuations. Make sure you go into it not expecting a big revelation or a horror moment, and you'll love it.
A subtle, claustrophobic, seduction of a novel. I loved its dreamy, hazy surface, and its uncomfortable undertow. 

[Heidi Zuva]

Stylist magazine comped this to Rebecca and Saltburn, so naturally I had to read it.

Premise - Ruby, an up-and-coming filmmaker, moves into the guest room of her idol, Ellen's, house. Surrounded by luxury and in the nest of her inspiration, writing her next film has to be a breeze. Right?

Only Ellen has an angsty 20yo daughter, Lara. Of course. And Ellen? She can't stay away from the mother, nor from the daughter. This family, this house -- the whole shebang could be a haunting.

...but it's not though.😅 I think the comps (Rebecca! Saltburn!) and the description of it as a gothic had me expecting a very different kind of story. This is not horror, at least no more so than any other slow-paced, minimal plot mostly vibes, angsty self-discovery lit fic.

It is gothic in the sense that the house is a character and you get a bit of a claustrophobic feel. I came to this after reading CLEANER, another installation in the weird girl subgenera, and this is definitely more focused/less meandering than that one, but I just kept waiting for the beat to drop and it... didn't. It's a me problem.

Definitely check this out if you're in the mood for a litfic, coming of age, #metoo but they're all women, critique of 'feminists' who turn around and do the same thing when they get a sniff of power kind of read.

But the comps? Eh... I don't see it. I mean, maybe. If I squint, really *really* hard. Whilst being concussed. And not wearing glasses, nor contacts.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Mei Mei MacLeod. She did a great job with the read! It would have taken me much longer to get through this if I were reading it as a physical book, so the audiobook was a win.

Thanks, NetGalley and Macmillan Audio, for the audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Christine Bobby · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be completely honest, there wasn’t anything I enjoyed about reading this book. I didn’t care about any of the characters. I found everything about it to be infuriating and just plain unlikable. Confusing from start to finish. And it just dragged on without any point.

Thank you NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company publishing for the early access.

[Ellen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seductive writing, amazing dialogue, and a stunning plot - this book has it all. I was consumed and did not want to step away from the world inside this book. The feelings between Ruby, Lara, and Ellen drew me in and had me in awe. The feminine vibes oozed from the pages and the setting itself was like walking into a beautiful painting and living inside of it. At times haunting, this book is truly a work of art. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Kristina Bulovic · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't finish it. It's a personal thing, but I don't enjoy reading books that have no quotations. Especially if it reads like run on sentences in long paragraphs. And most especially when they say the names of the characters over and over.

It's impossible to tell who is talking, who they're talking to, and if they're really even talking at all...

That said, if you like Sally Rooney you'd probably like this one. I was curious about the setting and the dynamics, I just couldn't do the massive dialog with no quotes.

[Blaiz Ferrel · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

I saw a review by a Claire Fuller that said this was a horror without the horror- and that is exactly how I want to describe it. It has this slow building sense of dread, a claustrophobic atmosphere, and a fever dream quality that kept me invested.
I was convinced it was building toward something dark and unforgettable. Buuuut nothing ever actually happened, for me. I did love the narrator- she really made it that fever dream feel that kept me listening.

During a relentless summer heatwave, aspiring filmmaker Ruby accepts an invitation to stay with her idol, acclaimed director Ellen, while finishing her screenplay. But beneath the glamorous estate, artistic ambition, and shimmering pool lies mounting tension, blurred boundaries, and the unsettling feeling that Ruby isn't the first young woman to fall under the house's spell.

The writing is immersive, the summer setting is incredibly vivid, and the creeping unease is done really well.
If you enjoy literary gothic fiction that's more atmospheric than outright horrifying, this one may be exactly what you're looking for.

[Bonnie]

DNF @ pg. 95

Unbearably pretentious.

[Sally Horna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wtf even happened??? It’s a lot of nothing and THERE ARE NO QUOTATION MARKS A LA SALLY ROONEY AND IT PISSED ME AWWWWFFF

[Alaina]

Imogen Crimp deftly explores the many facets of what it means to be an ambitious woman in the arts in this slow-simmer of a summer novel. The scene-setting is incredibly effective here; you can practically feel the sweat drip down your back. I also really enjoyed Crimp's keen observations throughout; I'm just coming off a binge of the Neapolitan quartet, and Crimp had many moments here that felt Ferrante-esque in their astuteness. It's a gift, to be able to capture those universal-and-yet-nobody-really-talks-about-it experiences. While I do wish there had been more of a payoff for all of that boiling tension, I enjoyed this nonetheless.

[Maddie Marriott · Rating 2 out of 5]

good and then it all went to shit about halfway through. how many times can you “suddenly realize” something you’ve “always known?” i’m tired

[Hannah_likes_to_read · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh.

[Christina Pace · Rating 3 out of 5]

A big thank you to Henry Holt and Co., Netgalley, and the author for providing an ARC for review!

2.5, rounded up to 3 for the descriptions and the prose.



Give Me Everything You Got started out promising for me. Female and sapphic obsession, unhealthy fixation on a personal idol, creepy vibes, weird actions/reactions, and a creepy house? Okay, you got me! However, as it went on, I began to realize how meandering it is.

I loved reading the descriptions in this book, and the way Imogen Crimp describes the malaise of a heat wave is so perfect. I could easily envision the setting in my mind. The main cast -Ruby, Lara, and Ellen (lol) - and how they played off each other was something I couldn't wait to see evolve further, as well as their views on film as 'feminist' filmmakers, but then... it just stopped. There is a specific point in the book where you can feel the narrative tension sputter out into pages of hallucinogenic freeform. I'm not completely opposed to a stream-of-conscious style of writing (I really liked Brittany Newell's Soft Core, for starters) but there are so many bizarre red flags that pop up at the beginning to pique your interest, only to never be further interrogated. Maybe they were supposed to be red herrings, maybe not, maybe it's answered in some subtext I didn't pick up on, but regardless it's still unsatisfying to read these plot threads come up, only to be dropped in favor of obsessive, dream-like angst.

I'm also trying to remain spoiler-free, because this book won't be out until July 2026, but BIG BIG BIG content warning for one sequence in the book that involves animal death - specifically that of a chicken. It's not super graphic but it's so luridly detailed that I started skimming, and the character reaction to it adds to the nausea of the sequence.

[Kris the retired librarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every book has its reader. This one's reader just isn't me, and I want to tell you why.

Back in the 1930s, a librarian named S.R. Ranganathan wrote a set of guiding principles for library science. Two of them have stuck with me for 20 years: every reader their book, and every book its reader. The idea is simple. Every person can find books they love, and every book will find the people who love it.

That's my roundabout way of telling you I'm not the reader for Give Me Everything You've Got. And that's genuinely fine.
The premise: Ruby is a young filmmaker just starting to taste success when she's invited to spend the summer at the country house of Ellen, the feminist director she idolizes and who's promised to mentor her. The retreat sours fast. Ruby gets pulled into the mind games between Ellen and her magnetic daughter Lara, and the house itself starts to feel haunted by the sense that she isn't the first promising young woman brought there.

On paper that's gothic Rebecca territory, and I wanted to love it. I just didn't feel it. The characters stayed vague and hard to root for, the pace crawled, and the whole thing is written in long unbroken blocks with no quotation marks around the dialogue. If the goal was to read like one long stream of consciousness, the writing pulls it off. I found it tough to follow.

But not connecting with a book isn't the same as a book being bad. The prose is doing something deliberate, and there are readers who will fall hard for exactly that. If you love literary fiction that asks you to sink into a mood instead of a plot, this could be your summer obsession.

Thank you to Henry Holt for the gifted copy.

[Jacquelynn Lyon]

A weird little book where nothing really happens but a lot of atmosphere. The book does give that fever-dream quality as a filmmaker ends up staying with her mentor and her daughter over a long week. I liked the style of no quotations and enjoyed the intensity of the characters and their relationships but if felt like build-up with no payoff. A little book with a weird little ending that felt like, at times, an MFA program was hunting me for sport. Like, something deep was supposed to be happening, but in the meantime here was some placeholder literary things (illicit sex, drinking/drugs, queerness).

[Tess · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an absolutely BONKERS ride. I was expecting a fun summer read based on the cover but this is like, legit a horror novels that freaked me out.

With some REBECCA vibes (one of my fave movies, peppered with surreal moments and romantic obsession, the mother-daughter relationship that our main character gets caught up in is nothing short of freaky deaky.

It’s claustrophobic, unexpected, and a fantastic yet unexpected takedown of toxic mentorship (this example
being female filmmakers - another jam of mine). The ending was perfect too, which I always take into account with my star ratings. So, a fun weird book that’s not for everyone but for me it was a solid ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit of a slog for me. I'm not the biggest fan of gothic writing, so to me the "modern gothic" bit here was done well in that it was set in a big spooky house; the MC was constantly disassociating, wandering around aimlessly, and losing her mind for no apparent reason; and it was repetitive in a way that was probably intentional but just felt vague and boring. Aside from that, it read a little bit like a toothless "The Guest" by Emma Cline, or like a less compelling "bottle episode" version of a novel by Sally Rooney.

I liked the oddness of Lara's character, and the relationship between her and Ellen. I would have liked the progression of the relationship between Lara and Ruby more, but it felt like Ruby was just randomly doing things. Like, it didn't feel like she was doing anything intentionally or because she wanted to do them, she was just floating around and reacting to things.

Ultimately, I think this would have been ten times better as a short story. I also feel like I would have enjoyed it a lot more as a film, which is a thought I probably had because the main characters were all filmmakers. I feel like an atmospheric, gauzy, somewhat directionless story like this is one I could appreciate more through a visual medium. The claustrophobia of the isolated house, the unbearable heat, the house slowly getting trashed once Ellen leaves, etc. were all very strong visuals in the story, but as a book, I just felt a little unfulfilled.

2.5 rounded up. I listened to an ALC from Libro.fm, and the narration by Mei Mei McLeod was great.

[Amy (amyrose.reads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 ⭐️

Thank you so much to the Macmillan Audio Early Listeners Program for this ALC!

Give Me Everything You’ve Got is described as a modern gothic story. Throughout the book, we follow Ruby, an up and coming film maker who has been invited to stay with her mentor, Ellen. At the beginning of the book, I had expectations for what it would be, then those expectations were subverted about 30% of the way in.

Ruby is an interesting character to read, mostly because I kept getting the heebie jeebies and I just wanted to scream at her to GET OUT of that house. There were just weird vibes! It was frustrating to read her, it felt as if I were constantly awaiting some kind of jump scare.

Throughout the book, I felt like many of the characters thought or spoke just to sound poignant. Not even necessarily because that is their character, but because the book wanted to say something that felt important. I just continuously felt like it was really trying hard to be meaningful, which often took me out of the reading experience. This combined with a general lack of closure to the book made it less enjoyable than I would’ve hoped.

As an audiobook, I feel as though it was well produced. The audio was clear and the narrator did a good job of portraying that unease that was hovering over the narrative.

[Jess Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the advanced listener copy of this modern gothic novel. The more I sit with this one the more I like it. This is the perfect combination of weird girl modern lit meets Rebecca, but make it more psychological.

From the very beginning this had me in a choke hold. I paused this book numerous times to sit and think about the choices made by the female main character and the conversations had around feminism, identity and sexuality.

The psychological games being played built steadily without feeling overwhelming until you as the reader are unsure of reality. While I have seen many critiques of the plot progression and conclusion, I think the ending was masterfully done. This isn't a plot forward book. The author does an excellent job building dread, anxiety and confusion through manipulation while focusing on the characters.

The audio was narrated well with distinct voices for the characters. I think people who have issues with books without quotation marks will enjoy this audio as an alternative.

4.5 ⭐️

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ruby is a young artist who is grasping for any semblance of upward mobility, so it feels almost too good to be true when she's invited to a mentorship at a famous director's idyllic countryside estate. Naive and eager to prove herself, she slowly begins to question her companions' intentions and, eventually, her own mind. What follows is a fever dream of creative ambition, summer lust, and eventually, paranoia, wrapped up in an eerie gothic atmosphere.

I kept waiting for this to tip into horror, but it really stayed in the realm of "uneasy vibes." It felt like a lot of suspense without much payoff. It's a little more distant than I tend to like for character-driven fiction. Everything felt slightly surface-level, and I kept wanting more of Ruby's interior life. I even found myself almost dissociating from the story at times, as the slow hazy pace was hard to tune into.

However, Mei Mei MacLeod's audiobook narration is exceptional. She captures the novel's strange, unsettled frequency so well that I thoroughly enjoyed the audiobook, even without much plot momentum or significant character development to propel it forward.

Thank you to Henry Holt for the ARC and Macmillan Audio for the ALC via netgalley!

[Kayla Winkler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Give Me Everything You've Got had everything I usually love: gothic atmosphere, sapphic tension, a complicated mentor relationship, and a creepy country house. The premise immediately pulled me in.

I found the writing to be immersive, and Crimp captures the oppressive heat and sense of unease beautifully. The atmosphere is easily the novel's best feature.

Unfortunately, the story became increasingly abstract to me. I kept waiting for the tension to build into something more, but many of the threads never felt fully explored. By the end, I admired what the book was trying to do more than I actually enjoyed reading it.

If you love slow fiction that's driven more by mood than plot, this may be a great fit. It just wasn't quite a perfect book for me.

Thank you NetGalley for the early copy!

[Chelsea (gofetchabook) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know, this one wasn’t really for me. I went back and reread the synopsis after I finished the book, and I didn’t really get that from the book at all.

Ruby is as aspiring screen writer and she goes to stay at a famous director’s house for the summer to work on her screenplay, but gets tangled up with the director’s odd daughter. I didn’t feel like the story was super parsed out. I kept expecting more to happen, but it didn’t.

At first I was kind of bored and then it got tense and weird and then I didn’t understand the ending.

Maybe it went over my head, maybe others will enjoy it, but for me, it just didn’t really work.

[Jaimes_Mystical_Library · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty good read. This book was well written, and told a unique story but was a bit slow to unfold. As intriguing as this book’s concept was, I failed to relate and feel for the characters and between that and the pacing there were times where I struggled to want to continue reading. I think this book had some good moments and had a lot of potential, but I’m not sure I would categorize it as a horror. Overall, I’m not sure what I thought of this one.

Thank you to Henry Holt for sending me this gifted copy.

[Brittany Moore · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to @henryholtbooks for sponsoring the giveaway through @goodreads for the opportunity to read an ARC of Give Me Everything You've Got by Imogen Crimp. My opinions are my own.

I also fall into the group of those readers who prefer quotations or line breaks for dialogue. Having it within a paragraph makes it difficult for me to follow and I had to go back several times to find where a spoken line ended and descriptive writing began, which ultimately kept interrupting the reading experience.

All in all, beautiful writing in a story that didn't seem to go far and left me with more questions than answers.

[Olivia Noel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Im inclined to give this book a lovely review because of how captivated it made me. I was blown away by the events unfolding that i felt somehow in a trance. There were themes I wasn’t fully picking up on and so I see this novel as a perfect book but just not for this time in my life. I will read it again someday i’m sure. Maybe it will be hot outside.

[Ari]

Unfortunately this was a DNF for me. The story moves very slowly (I’m not one for a slow burn) and I found it really difficult to become invested in the characters. I was excited to read it but it just wasn’t what I was looking for.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Chutney Was Never Going to Save Her
In Imogen Crimp’s sharp modern gothic, a young filmmaker learns that the right gift, the right room, and the right mentor can still be all wrong.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | July 15th, 2026

Danger, in Imogen Crimp’s “Give Me Everything You’ve Got,” does not first arrive as sex, scandal, or the old dark charm of a beautiful house. It arrives as an offer too plausible to refuse. Ruby, an emerging filmmaker with a Sundance prize, a half-obedient feature script, and ambition that has not yet learned how to look casual, is given what every young artist is trained to desire: a room, quiet, meals, wine, time, and the attention of a famous woman who has already colonized her imagination. Nothing about the offer is obviously false. That is what makes it expensive.

Ellen, Ruby’s host, is a celebrated feminist director whose severity has hardened into glamour. She has invited Ruby to her country house during a heat wave, in theory so Ruby can work. The place is roomy enough to make space feel moral: roses, rugs, high ceilings, a pool, a study with serious papers on the desk. Its spare rooms suggest not luxury exactly, but a civilization built against interruption. Ellen also has a daughter, Lara, twenty, clever, sunburned, bored, performatively careless, and presented by her mother as someone who may need “looking after.” Ruby thinks she has arrived as a guest. The house keeps its own accounts.

Maybe Ruby’s first mistake is believing that being admitted means being wanted. Ellen’s attention flatters her, then exposes her. Lara’s coolness irritates her, then attracts her, then turns her into something between lover, babysitter, witness, and unpaid staff. In one room Ruby is a promising filmmaker; in another, a pupil; in the kitchen, a helper; by the pool, a watcher; in Ellen’s bed, a trespasser; in the study, a case file; at the party, a story people might enjoy after another drink. Ruby is not locked out. She is let in just far enough to be useful.

Early, Ruby insists that art is invention. In the opening frame, she sits onstage after a screening of her film while an audience member presses her to say which parts came from life. Ruby resists: film is illusion; she makes things up. Then she sees Ellen in the audience, and her body revises the theory. The rest of the novel returns us to the July that made such questions harder than Ruby can afford. Did she invent, transform, survive, borrow – or simply learn how much of herself other people expected her to leave unlocked? The appetite for “truth” starts at the microphone, then follows Ruby into the house.

The first lock clicks at a workshop table. At Ellen’s women-in-film workshop, each participant is asked to describe the moment she first knew she was female. The request sounds intellectual for about three seconds before it becomes something closer to a sorting ritual. Self-knowledge becomes performance; performance becomes competition; Ellen’s approval becomes the prize. Ruby, who has spent years making short films and tutoring rich children into futures she herself cannot afford, is singled out. Soon Ellen calls with a “proposition.” Ruby can come to the country. She can write. She can be fed, noticed, improved. She can live near Ellen’s authority. Good manners close the door more softly than melodrama does.

Ruby’s feature script concerns a young woman, pregnancy, abortion, sex, and the refusal of the expected trauma arc. Ellen, when she finally asks about it, does not critique the script so much as enter it with a lit match. Why pregnancy? Why abortion? Why not trauma? Why this girl, this man, this body, this refusal? Ellen is wrong in the way only a very perceptive person can be wrong. She sees where Ruby may be hiding, but treats that hiding as material she has permission to pry loose. Artistic intelligence and emotional trespass share a key and come downstairs together.

It would be easy, and duller, if Ellen were simply cruel. Crimp gives her more unnerving tools: taste, insight, charm, maternal panic, professional authority, and the language of liberation. Ellen’s feminism is not fake; her readings are not empty; her care is not wholly theatrical. That is the problem. She knows how to make invasion sound like courage, how to convert privacy into unfinished work, how to ask for disclosure while calling it craft. She does not need to steal Ruby’s script in any crude sense. She can make Ruby offer herself, then remain just indifferent enough to make the offering feel absurd.

Prose, first, does the prying. Ruby’s voice notices the room, then notices itself wanting the room to approve. Her sentences often begin in social observation and end in self-betrayal. A pause becomes a verdict; a hostess gift becomes a class panic; a private joke between Ellen and Lara becomes proof that Ruby is outside something she has not yet been invited to name. Crimp is especially good at charging small domestic facts with unease. A jar of chutney has rarely stood so close to tragedy, though the tragedy is really Ruby’s hope that the right chutney might prove she belongs.

As narration, Ruby’s voice is funny because it is not trying to be charming in a tidy way. She is vain, lonely, sharp, ashamed, desirous, and often ridiculous in exactly the proportions that make her credible. She can diagnose her own need for Ellen’s approval and continue needing it with devotional incompetence. The comedy comes from the gap between interpretation and action. Ruby keeps seeing the trap, then pausing to wonder whether the trap found her interesting. Crimp’s wit is not snide; it is quick, social, and slightly mortifying, like realizing too late that the joke at dinner may have been about you.

Perhaps the book’s cleverest piece of architecture is not the house itself but the way each room changes Ruby’s rank. Her top-floor bedroom suggests artistic permission; the hidden servants’ passage whispers a less flattering arrangement. Ellen’s study promises seriousness but also surveillance. The kitchen is where Ruby is fed, questioned, and set to tasks. The pool is leisure until it becomes evidence. Ellen’s bedroom is erotic victory until it becomes confinement. By the time the final party fills the lawn with actors, producers, guests, jokes, and disclosures, the house has decided exactly where Ruby belongs: close enough to entertain, never close enough to command.

A film script, a bedroom, a workshop answer, a party anecdote: everything here eventually touches the question of what a woman artist is allowed to withhold. Ruby wants to write a film in which abortion does not automatically become the climactic wound. Ellen insists that refusal may be evasion. Producers want a female story. Audiences want the real-life key. Workshops want epiphanies. Lovers want access. Mentors want vulnerability. Even kindness wants a backstory. “Give Me Everything You’ve Got” is most unsettling when it sees that honesty, in the wrong hands, is not a virtue but a tool. The wound is not always healed by being narrated. Sometimes it is merely made easier for others to pass around.

During Ellen’s absence, the house loosens its collar without changing owners. Lara juices Ellen’s blood oranges with tequila, abandons the meal plans, invites Ruby into Ellen’s bedroom, and turns the place into a feverish little republic of sex, stolen objects, bad chores, bad faith, and childish liberty. Yet Ellen’s absence is only another way for Ellen to occupy the rooms. The bed is hers, the bath products are hers, the oranges are hers, the dread of return is hers. Ruby and Lara behave like conspirators, but they are also children playing government in a country whose monarch has stepped out for a meeting.

Inside Lara’s theatrical damage, the book finds its most unstable current. She is a lure, but not only a lure. A victim, but not only a victim. A spoiled child, an abandoned child, a performer of damage, a girl who knows how to make helplessness issue commands. Ellen has filmed her, aestheticized her, worried over her, controlled her, displayed her, hidden her. Ruby is drawn to Lara partly because Lara seems to offer a way around Ellen, then discovers that Lara may be the most intricate expression of Ellen’s world. Their desire feels real, but not pure. It is freedom, mimicry, revenge, need, experiment, and audition, depending on the hour.

Mostly, the suspense lies in the speed with which Ruby’s title in the house keeps changing. She is guest, artist, lover, daughter, servant, critic, caretaker, witness. The answer changes by room. That fluidity gives the novel its pressure and its comedy. Ruby did not come to the house to become useful; usefulness is simply what access begins to require. First she is asked for opinions, then stories, then help with Lara’s personal statement, then garden labor, then discretion, then emotional management of a crisis nobody quite names. Hospitality, here, is not a gift. It is a line of credit.

If the family resemblances are useful, they should be kept on the lawn, not invited upstairs. “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier glows behind the young-woman-in-the-house arrangement, but Crimp is less interested in haunting than in social permission. “Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh offers a clue to classed enchantment, to the summer light of belonging somewhere one will never own. “Hot Milk” by Deborah Levy is a nearer cousin for heat, bodily unease, and mother-daughter dependency. Still, Crimp’s novel has its own private climate. It is not a house haunted by the dead; it is a house overfull of the living, each asking someone else to become material.

This is where the book slightly overloads the ending. Earlier menace arrives through pressure so small it nearly passes for manners: a question, a chore, a silence, a compliment placed at the wrong angle. Later, the dead chicken, the missing money, the druggy photograph, the locked room, the sleeping pills, the party game, the failed fire, and Ruby’s expulsion arrive in a tighter cluster than the novel quite needs. None is false to the book. All belong to its fever. But the crowding makes the machinery more visible than in the earlier chapters, where Crimp trusts implication and is usually rewarded for it.

Ruby suspects, near the end, that Ellen has taken something from her script, only to discover a more humiliating injury. Ellen has not stolen Ruby’s work. She has taken notes for Ruby, about Ruby, around Ruby, with a terrible mixture of attention and indifference. Theft would at least have granted Ruby importance. Instead, she must face the possibility that she was interpreted, used, managed, and never quite central. Crimp’s cruelty is exact here. Ruby wanted to matter enough to be plundered. Ellen denies her even the grandeur of appropriation.

On the party lawn, the book’s private cruelties become public entertainment. Guests gather and make disclosure into sport. Humiliation, danger, sex, and grotesquerie circulate as amusement. Lara tells a version of the week that is both confession and performance, injury and joke, truth and dare. Ruby, given her turn, could expose everyone. Instead she tells a story about wanting Ellen’s invitation, wanting the room, wanting the blessing, wanting the life. The guests laugh because they do not quite understand the pain, or because they understand enough to know how charming pain can be when it is not theirs.

Present-day pressures brush the novel rather than boss it around. Reputation storms, identity and artistic authorization, creative-industry gatekeeping, the pressure on women artists to produce biography as evidence: all are here, but none is allowed to take over the room. The older arrangement remains visible underneath. Powerful people have long known how to make dependence resemble intimacy. Artists have long been tempted to call extraction honesty when the material is someone else’s. Crimp has not found a new sin. She has given an old one flattering light.

Other readers may want sharper punishment, cleaner rescue, a heroine less susceptible to glamour, or an ending that sorts the guilty from the merely damaged. They may find Ruby exasperating, Lara too volatile, Ellen too composed, the heat too insistent. Fair objections, up to a point. The novel keeps asking us to remain with a narrator who can be exploited and complicit, lucid and foolish, injured and vain. Ruby is not a polished emblem of young womanhood. She is talented, hungry, funny, and prone to the fatal thought that being seen by the right person might spare her the slower work of becoming herself.

Under the heat Crimp has been training us to feel, “Give Me Everything You’ve Got” earns an 85/100, or 4/5 stars: high admiration, with one reservation about the overfull final act. Its best work is not the freshness of the furniture. The house, the pool, the older artist, the daughter, the party, the heat – all could have become lacquered props from the outsider-in-the-house tradition. Crimp makes them instruments. Each plays the same unpleasantly elegant tune: what do you owe the person who gives you a room, and what do they believe the room entitles them to take?

Less successful novels would burn the house down and call that justice. Crimp lets Ruby try. The attempt fails, as it should, because fire would be too clean. Ash would let everyone off. A destroyed house can become a story of escape; an intact one remains a system. The cruelty of the ending is that Ellen and Lara stay inside the arrangement while Ruby leaves with material, shame, and perhaps the beginnings of a film. She has not triumphed. She has learned the shape of the bargain.

Only after Ruby leaves does the title fully sharpen. “Give Me Everything You’ve Got” sounds first like seduction, then like artistic challenge, then like maternal demand, then like the house itself speaking through its bedrooms, pool, passage, and party lawn. Give me your trauma. Give me your discretion. Give me your desire. Give me your usefulness. Give me your version of events, preferably polished enough for company. The novel’s sting is that Ruby gives more than she means to and still leaves feeling underchosen.

Still, the final image is not Ruby emptied but Ruby outside. The house remains intact behind her, beautiful, organized, and ready for the next guest, the next protégée, the next young woman who mistakes welcome for recognition. Crimp does not give us the satisfaction of collapse. She gives us the more durable unease of continuity: the room restored, the pool bright, the hostess composed, the invitation ready to sound generous.

[Lacy Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars.

This feels like the hot sweaty humid thick atmosphere of Evenings and Weekends meets Rebecca. Think gothic novel haunted vibes but instead of haunted a weird toxic mother and daughter relationship and you came because the mother, a famous feminist director, invited you (an up and coming film maker) and shit gets weird fast and stays weird.

This will not be for everyone, but I liked it a lot. I listened to it on audio. Thank you for the ARC!!

[booksta_lana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strictly literary book that will miss the mark for many readers. I loved how unsettling and weird it was, a fever dream I didn’t want to wake up from.