Chapter 2 shifts entirely to Chip Proctor’s point of view, and it does excellent work establishing him as more than the jet-setting hedge fund playboy he first appears to be. Arriving at his late brother’s home after the funeral with his supermodel girlfriend Mia in tow, Chip’s carefully guarded composure cracks the moment he senses his grieving four-year-old niece, Sadie, needs him. Their scene together, a knight-and-princess routine to coax her into eating lunch, is warm, funny, and genuinely moving. Underneath the tenderness, though, the chapter builds real tension. Chip’s unexplained irritation at Rose caring for the children, a feeling he can’t quite justify to himself, hints at something deeper than ordinary in-law friction. His well-meaning but tone-deaf comment about Rose’s delayed arrival sparks a sharp, honest exchange between them that neither one backs down from, laying bare the grief Read more…

Book 1 of the Unlikely Guardian series opens with a jolt of pure action. Rose, a Fae relic hunter and royal arms mistress, battles a millennia-old demon guardian inside a hidden temple in Iraq to recover the Star of Azothine, a cursed sapphire artifact her family has hunted for years. The fight is fast, brutal, and beautifully choreographed, and it establishes Rose immediately as a formidable warrior comfortable operating far outside the human world most readers know. The chapter’s real gut-punch lands the moment Rose emerges victorious. A phone call from her Aunt Allura delivers devastating news: Rose’s older sister Lili and her human husband Bobby have died in a car accident, leaving behind two young children, four-year-old Sadie and infant Addison. The abrupt tonal shift, from triumphant demon-slaying to grief and dawning suspicion, is exactly the kind of emotional Read more…