Author: Chelsey Philpot

Chelsey Philpot made her fiction debut with a novel about friendship, privilege, grief, and the appeal of belonging to a glamorous family. Even in Paradise follows Charlotte Ryder, a scholarship student at the New England boarding school St. Anne’s, after she befriends Julia Buchanan and is drawn into the Buchanan family’s private world. Charlotte also becomes close to Julia’s older brother Sebastian, while slowly recognizing that the family’s charm is built around an unresolved tragedy. Harper released the book for teenage readers in 2014, with Stephen Barbara representing it. Reviewers noted its New England settings, suspenseful structure, and echoes of stories about celebrated political families. Philpot’s perspective stays with Charlotte, so the social scale of vacation homes and inherited status is filtered through a narrator who remains partly outside it. Even in Paradise is therefore both a coming-of-age story and a study of how intimacy with wealth can distort judgment, loyalty, and memory. It remains Philpot’s principal published novel.