Isolde "Izzy" Goodnight grew up as the beloved inspiration for her father's famous serialized fairy tales; the whole nation adored the fictional Goodnight girl. The real Izzy, now twenty-six, orphaned, and penniless, has learned that fairy-tale fame does not pay the bills. Then a mysterious bequest hands her the deed to a castle, and with it, a chance at independence.
There is only one problem: the crumbling Gostley Castle already has an occupant. Ransom Vane, the Duke of Rothbury, is furious, half-feral, and unwilling to surrender the ruin he has been hiding in since the accident that changed his life. Neither will leave, so they strike an uneasy truce, and as Izzy digs into the castle's secrets and the duke's guarded heart, the disillusioned romantic starts to believe in her own happy ending after all.
The first book in Tessa Dare's Castles Ever After series is a swoony, playful historical romance about fandom, reinvention, and the difference between the stories we are given and the ones we choose. It pairs a warm-hearted heroine with a brooding, wounded duke for a slow burn inside a castle that needs as much saving as they do.