A teenage Fate initiate must overcome disbelief and self-doubt to master her powers while uncovering the dark mystery lurking beneath the surface of a small mountain town in rural Virginia.

SYNOPSIS:

The dark windows of the abandoned caboose stare down at Dawn as she wonders how she got to the historic Virginia town park when the last thing she remembers is sitting in AP Chemistry. Within a blink, three eternally youthful girls climb out of the rickety structure and invite Dawn into the world of time. The world of the Fates. Temptation and curiosity defeat her skepticism, and Dawn agrees to join them as an initiate. The first of nine trials is easy, but then a young girl dies after the second trial and Dawn is shattered. She throws her brief training, natural ability and frustration at the three aloof girls, but in turn they threaten consequences worse than death if she fails.

Reluctantly, Dawn perseveres, struggling with the responsibility of shaping destinies, and barely escaping a string of accidents that claim more lives. She initially suspects sabotage by Nikos—the new boy at school—until he rescues her from a dangerous situation he obviously didn’t cause.

Dawn weaves an ever-worsening path of destruction for those she meddles with while trying to complete her first trials. Desperate for help and not knowing where else to turn, she pushes aside her suspicions and teams up with Nikos to discover what sort of entity could be powerful enough to elicit fear in the spinners of time. They learn the Fates are not unknown to her hometown, or even to Nikos’ family. His mom and aunt were the prior generation’s Fate initiates until halfway through something went horribly wrong and they were unable to complete their trials. Dawn’s fear builds within her—failure, a fate worse than death, and being locked away with Nikos’ aunt, catatonic for 20 years in the local mental hospital—until Dawn and Nikos come to a stunning realization. The Fates abandoned Nikos’ aunt to Gorak—the embodiment of Chaos that now stalks Dawn with equal parts danger and seduction.

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The three Fates appear repeatedly in mythology and literature, but only in a glancing manner. Similar to the Wolves of Mercy Falls series, The Fated series takes a simple myth and expands it into an intricately developed origin story. The series addresses the issues of free will and the merits of pre-determined fate versus chaos in a fast-paced, young adult paranormal mystery novel.