Dani

Fifteen. Seventy pounds overweight. No plan. No boyfriend. No future. I was the girl who settled for a Tom Selleck poster and a dream choked with a hand to mouth life working two jobs like my mom did-until my grocery cart crashed into a woman in a red cape. Not a costume. Not a kid. A grown-up Little Red Riding Hood, eyes sharp as steel and a jaw clenched against a world full of too many cakes and cookies and not enough hard-cutting honesty. What came next wasn't a fairy tale-it was a demolition. Every illusion I clung to-about love, beauty, success, and wealth...and the lie that "someday" fixes everything-got torched. I faced my bulging mirror and saw the mountain I had to climb. I had a choice to make: did I want it? Did I really want it? DO YOU REALLY WANT THIS, DANI? You think it's a simple question and a simple answer, but it's the hardest thing you'll ever have to decide-a great hurt wrapped in the truth that no one is coming to save you. This isn't your safe-space story. It's a wake-up call. And I'm warning you. My journey out of illusions and into honesty will probably piss you off and break your heart. It might even force you to face a few ugly truths about love, loss and a few facts of life about seeking your dreams if you still have any. Let me tell you, life's no equal-opportunity winner's circle. After a few years of bad training or no training at all, life doesn't hand out equal shots-it hands out consequences. Bad habits. Broken homes. Lazy dreams. They stack up fast and most people just keep adding weight to the pile. But you don't have to be like them. The question is the same for you as it was for me: are you tough enough to take advice? Can you put aside your illusions long enough to listen? I stopped. I listened. I fought. I changed. Truth doesn't chase anyone. You have to go after her, catch up and walk with her and talk with her and stop being afraid of her. This is the first of four books full of dreams and doubts, love and learning, facing a mountain and deciding to climb it.

Dani's a girl who in Book One faced monumental body image issues. But taking the advice from her new friend, and with steely determination, she now faces a whole new set of problems she never bargained for-how to protect herself from herself. The beauty coin seems to have three sides. It seems beauty comes in a package: one side is what you get when you quit with your unhealthy habits, lose seventy pounds, and peel off the mask that hides a girl of the Northeast Tribes; the second part is love and sex, which comes drifting in and tries to swallow you up; and the third part is your dreams and how you and your brand-new beautiful self are a threat to them.

In Book One of the Dani Series, Dani cuts ties with her obesity and takes the high road toward a healthier diet and lifestyle, having the good fortune of her friendship with Marian, her mentoress, who shows her the way, and of her friendship with Cindy Rand, her childhood friend, who sees her beauty despite all the fat and never stops praising her. In Books Two and Three, Dani struggles to make sense of a complicated dichotomy of feelings that leave her divided between girl-love for Cindy and her sudden self-discovery as a beautiful young woman caught up in the burning inferno that the popping-blue eyes of Flavio Cantonia ignite. However, through all this, Dani is caught in the emotional winds of incomprehensible social conflicts that play against her dreams of wealth as she looks to her future. It seems that everything up to this point has tightened the tension of her story and given her a measure of hope for achieving all the things her heart desires. Enter Book Four (this book), where Fate deals her more love challenges, a possible resolution to her father's health dilemma, yet another boy to love, and expands her story to the foothills of Harmony Mountain and a sailboat on Cutter Lake. She still must face all the risks to her future that she herself and her hormones pose; but Fate isn't finished. Along with all the turmoil and temptations that threaten to knock her off her path to wealth and true love, Fate hands her one more tragedy. Throughout the series, Dani has been known for her vision, courage, and resilience. Will she give in to the transgressions of youth and lose herself to the pleasures of love, or will she find the strength to push through with dignity and sobriety and climb the mountain where there are kites to fly, songs to sing, and where vast horizons await.