Juno Reyes

Juno Reyes writes fast, dark fantasy about schools that lie, gifts that bill you later, and kids who read the fine print too late. The books come from two stubborn obsessions: institutions that feed on the people they claim to protect, and the question of what you owe for the things you are good at.

Juno writes for the one-more-chapter reader. Short chapters. Live tension on page one. An ending on every chapter that will not let you put the phone down. No warm-ups, no weather, no wasted pages.

The flagship is ALDERGATE, a seven-book dark academy fantasy. It follows Cass Mercer, a seventeen-year-old who can open anything that is locked, through a school that finds gifted teenagers, promises them mastery, and quietly takes it all back at graduation: the gift, and every memory tied to it. The school calls that mercy. Cass calls it what it is, and she has her own graduation date already on the calendar.

Off the page: the Pacific Northwest, strong coffee, old buildings with new padlocks, and a firm policy of never signing anything on the first visit.