First published 2026
Fern has waited years for a book deal, and now she finally has one. She imagines joining a debut author community, finding her people, building something real. Then she sees the name Haven on the announcements list. The same Haven who made Fern's high school years a misery. Haven has landed a bigger deal, a louder platform, and an effortless public persona that makes Fern's own struggling career feel smaller by the day. The pandemic pushes everything online, and the two women circle each other inside the same writing forums and group chats. Fern watches and waits. She has been doing that for years, actually. What looks like rivalry is something more deliberate on Fern's side. Underneath all of it sits a third name: Dani, a friend they both lost, and a past neither woman will describe honestly. Fern is not the person Haven once targeted. She has spent a long time deciding exactly what she wants to do about that. The story Fern has been writing is not the one her publisher bought. It is the one she has been living, one careful move at a time.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, psychological-thriller, mystery-thriller
Vibes: dark, intimate, psychological, suspenseful, tension-filled, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers-adjacent, shared-trauma, slow-burn-revenge, unreliable-narrator
Setting: high school, online forums, writing community
Period: pandemic era, contemporary
287 pages · Paperback · Mindy's Book Studio
Content warnings: abuse, emotional-abuse