Mara knows exactly what perfect romance looks like. It lives safely between the pages of her favorite fantasy books, where fictional heroes never abandon her and happy endings can always be reread. Real life has been less reliable. So when a long-planned camping trip falls apart and Mara heads into the wilderness alone, she expects disappointment, mosquito bites, and too much time with her own thoughts. She does not expect to cross into a hidden magical world. Ronan is a troll who has spent far too long believing he may never find the connection everyone around him seems to have. He is powerful, awkward, protective, and absolutely not the kind of romantic hero Mara imagined for herself. Yet after he finds her lost and vulnerable in territory where humans do not belong, keeping her alive becomes the beginning of something neither of them understands. The village beyond the human world is filled with ogres, witches, old magic, and rules Mara was never taught. Even stranger, she can enter places ordinary humans should not be able to cross. The mystery of why begins to matter as much as the growing attraction between her and Ronan. For Mara, being wanted feels almost as frightening as being alone, especially when every good thing in her life has always seemed temporary. For Ronan, protecting a human could put his home and his future at risk. Magic may have brought them together, but it cannot make trust easy. As hidden truths surface and Mara's place in this impossible world becomes harder to dismiss, she must decide whether the love she spent years searching for in books was never meant to look familiar at all.
Mara knows exactly what perfect romance looks like. It lives safely between the pages of her favorite fantasy books, where fictional heroes never abandon her and happy endings can always be reread. Real life has been less reliable. So when a long-planned camping trip falls apart and Mara heads in...