WELCOME TO THE CHICAGO SERIES
The Chicago Series was the first series I ever wrote, but it wasn’t planned as a series.
I wrote about Alyssa & Hannah and thought Fresh Start would be the last we’d see them, but when I started writing The Best Lines about Ember & Eva, I decided to bring them along. That was supposed to be it, but Charlie & Hailey were Ember’s best friends, and I was a sucker for a good friends-to-lovers story, so I gave them one in Just Tell Her. We met Summer & Lena in that book, and next thing I knew, I wanted to write all about them falling in love in Love Walked into The Lantern. Welcome to Chicago!
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This book is an Introduction to Chicago Series.
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Alyssa Masters had been accused of a horrible crime she didn’t commit and was now the most hated woman in America. She’d lost people she’d loved, her credibility, and a part of her life. To get it back on track, she returns home to live with her mother and has all but given up on any hope at a normal life.
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Hannah Granger had been off exploring the world and finding herself, only to return home to lose her mother and a lot of what she’d found out about herself while away.
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When the two women meet, they discover they can help find what they’d lost and uncover more of what they could have in their lives as they attempt to navigate a complicated situation and deal with the baggage they both bring with them.
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This is book #1 in the Chicago Series.
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Eva Dash has her career on track. After earning her Ph. D in Literature, she became a professor at the same college she’d called home as a student. When she loses the only job she’s ever wanted, she’s forced to consider leaving the only home she’s ever really known.
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Ember Elliot, the reformed player, has finally committed herself to looking for the right woman while struggling to find herself in other ways. She’s tired of being misunderstood by her family and hiding a very important part of herself from them. Being gay isn’t her secret. Wanting to be more than just a manager at her family’s restaurant is. And she’s ready to take steps to get what she wants.
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The two women meet when Ember does her best to keep Eva from being a notch in another woman’s bedpost. They find each other at the time when both of them have lives and careers in flux. It starts with a scribbled warning on a napkin, continues with a tree house kiss and ends with a wall covered in chalkboard paint.
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This is book #2 in the Chicago Series.
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Charlie Adams has two best friends. Ember Elliot and Hailey Grant, the woman she’s secretly been in love with since the moment they met over a decade ago. She has watched Hailey date all the wrong women and never said anything about how she wanted to be Hailey’s forever love.
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Hailey Grant had a first love that she was comparing every other woman to. When that woman comes back into her life, Hailey has to get to know her again after all this time. As Hailey tries to figure out if her first love is actually her forever love, she sees something is different about Charlie.
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When the two women embark on new relationships, they’ll have to finally confront their growing attraction for each other and decide if they can be brave enough to risk the most important friendship they have for possibly something more. Charlie might just be the girl who gets the girl after years of watching Hailey be miserable with other women who didn’t deserve her, and Hailey might have just had the right woman by her side this whole time.
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This is book #3 in the Chicago Series.
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Summer Taft is a twenty-seven-year-old billionaire, who founded a tech start-up with her brother while she was still in college. As that company’s CEO, she feels stuck and underappreciated. She also has to take care of the company while her brother goes off exploring the world, leaving her holding the bag. The company recently opened an office in Chicago, where Summer has met some new friends. As Summer decides to uproot her life and make the move to Chicago, she meets Lena.
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Lena Tanner has had no luck in her love life after divorcing her husband of several years before, after finally admitting to herself that she was gay. Lena had been exploring and having fun in the new life she’d made for herself. But now, she’s ready to find the one and settle down. After a blind date gone wrong, she ends up at The Lantern where she spots her group of expanding friends and a newcomer.
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Lena had never been brave in her personal life. And Summer has always had difficulty making decisions, small and large. The two women settle into a quick friendship that turns more flirtatious. But is either of them ready to dive right into something new that could be lasting?
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This is the Chicago Series Finale: a collection of 4 short stories about each featured couple in the Chicago Series. The events take place after each story's respective Epilogue.
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Do you ever read a story, fall in love with the characters and wonder what happens to them after the book ends? Epilogues are nice, but they’re a snapshot in time. Maybe it’s a year after the end of the book or even just six months. Maybe there’s a proposal or a wedding. Maybe a character announces she’s pregnant. Maybe a character just got their dream job.
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I write the epilogues in my books mostly for myself because I want to know where they go next. I like to check in on them to find out about those next big steps in their lives. What I’m doing here is adding to their stories.
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There’s a danger in this, of course. What if you’re already satisfied with how the story ended for the characters? What if this ruins it for you? That is a risk you’ll have to decide on your own to take. I’m merely providing short glimpses into the lives of my characters beyond their epilogues.
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If you plan to read these, please read all the books in the series first. Because the lives of the characters in the Chicago Series are so closely woven together, you won’t want to read the additional content for Eva and Ember, for example, until you’ve read all four of the Chicago Series books.