Paige Holloway thought she was starting over.

After a nonprofit scandal left her career in ruins and her reputation in question, Paige sinks her savings into a house in Hollow Ridge, a manicured cul-de-sac where every home has cameras, every resident has the group chat, and the HOA president keeps everyone safe.

Then a child goes missing for twenty minutes during a power outage. The cameras were dark. The neighborhood fractures. And a clip surfaces in the community chat that seems to show Paige walking past the boy’s yard at exactly the wrong time.

Paige knows she was inside her house. She knows the clip is wrong. But as fines accumulate, her employer receives anonymous emails, and the community closes ranks around the calm, competent woman who runs their world, Paige begins to understand that the system designed to protect

Hollow Ridge is the same system being used to destroy her, and she may not be the first resident it has targeted.

Cul-de-Sac Rules is a slow-burn domestic thriller about surveillance, gaslighting, and the quiet violence of communities that mistake control for safety.