Subjunctive Mood

Some lessons change more than the way you speak.

In the coastal town of George, South Africa, Bianca meets Ramón - a magnetic language teacher whose fascination with words runs far deeper than grammar. When he invites her to join his school, Instituto Guerrera, in Málaga, Spain, it feels like a chance to start over.

But the prestigious institute isn't what it seems. Beneath its polished surface lies a quiet network of control, silence, and obsession - a place where language shapes more than thought, and meaning can be turned against you. As Bianca's sense of self begins to erode, she must decide whether she's mastering a new language... or being rewritten by it.

Subjunctive Mood is the first novel in the False Friends Series - a psychological thriller about power, desire, and the dangerous ways communication can deceive. Inspired by real people and a real school, it blurs the boundary between truth and fiction, reminding us that words can both reveal and destroy.

A.G.R. Goff writes psychological thrillers that explore obsession, identity, and the blurred lines between truth and control. Born in Leipzig, East Germany, thirteen years before the Berlin Wall came down, she grew up in a world marked by secrets and division - an influence that continues to echo through her fiction.

Her first series, Mind Games, is set in London, New York and South Africa - inspired by places she has lived and worked, and others that have shaped her imagination. Goff often writes about locations she knows intimately, using them as psychological landscapes for her characters' inner conflicts.

After living in England and South Africa, she now lives in Spain, where her latest series, False Friends, takes place. Each book in the series uncovers the hidden lives of teachers and students at a language school in Málaga - where mind games, manipulation and grammar intertwine in unsettling ways.

When she isn't writing, Goff draws inspiration from languages, cultural contrasts and the psychology of communication - always searching for the stories that lie beneath the surface.