The Hunting Season

THE HUNTING SEASON is an 86,000-word YA fantasy set in a Lebanese-coded world. It’s ALL OF US VILLAINS meets The Godfather, and features seasonal magic called sahar. 

Seventeen-year-old Xandra Storm is the best gem forger in the city, renown for her Autumn fire sahar, but her uncle has barred her from claiming her birthright as leader to the criminal Order of Ash. Determined to prove herself, on Winter Solstice Xandra instigates a brawl with Blane Cascade, member of the rival Winter Order—and son of her mother’s murderer. When Xandra gets Blane’s cousin arrested, she’s confident she’s earned her rightful place. Instead, her uncle is furious and threatens her with banishment unless she retrieves an Order relic from the mysterious Centennial Celebration at the castle.

Blane Cascade wasn’t planning to attend the month-long Centennial; he doesn’t even want his own birthright as heir to the Order of Mist. But family means everything to him. So while his Order celebrates the solstice, he’s going to rescue his cousin—and maybe exact revenge on Xandra too. But his plans are derailed when he arrives at the castle and the Queen announces that the Centennial is actually a competition—and they’ll all have to contend in three trials to the death.

Shunned by the nobles, Xandra, Blane, and the other Order rivals must band together and wield their sahar to solve the puzzles killing the contestants off one by one. As tension rises throughout the castle, it flares brighter for Xandra and Blane, opening emotional doors they never knew existed. They’ll have to choose between loyalty to their families or to their hearts—and decide whose blood they’ll spill to win.

THE HUNTING SEASON is the first of a duology, a Romeo and Juliet remix that will appeal to fans of Leigh Bardugo’s SIX OF CROWS and Rachel Griffin’s NATURE OF WITCHES. This dual-POV tale invokes my own Lebanese-American experience, and raises difficult questions: What makes a family? What keeps one together? And how much of ourselves should we give to what is expected of us in lieu of what we really want?