The Beginning
The Rise of the Broken Heart series begins with Willow, a seventeen-year-old foster child ageing out of an abusive system. Raised in survival mode, she has spent her life making impossible choices for all the right reasons. Survival has always come first.
Eventually, every choice catches up with her and she ends up finding herself on the wrong side of the law, but the police aren't interested in Willow. They're interested in the dangerous people surrounding her. Willow is given a choice: jail, or a second chance. For the first time in her life, Willow chooses herself.
Sentenced to community service, community college, and court-mandated therapy, she is determined to build a different future. To keep her head down. To stay out of trouble.
Then two very different men enter her life.
One is Braxton, a troubled bad boy serving community service alongside her. Covered in tattoos and surrounded by chaos, he appears to be wasting the second chance they've both been given. Yet beneath the attitude is someone who understands Willow better than anyone ever has. He knows where she comes from. He knows what she's survived. And despite her determination to push him away, he refuses to stop showing up for her.
The other is Blake, the man who represents everything Willow never dared dream she could have. Success. Stability. A career. A future. A life beyond survival.
But not everything is as it seems.
Willow has never been taught how to trust. Never been shown what healthy love looks like. Never been given the tools to know the difference between someone who wants to save you and someone who wants to own you.
Because who do you trust, when trust has only ever broken you?
The Rise of the Broken Heart series is an emotional, interconnected romance saga about trauma, healing, found family, second chances, and discovering that love doesn't end when two people choose each other, it begins there.
The Series
Rise of the Broken Heart is a raw, emotionally charged dark contemporary romance series spanning eleven interconnected books, told across eleven evolving points of view on the same timeline as lives collide, fracture, and rebuild. At its core, this series explores survival, trauma, loyalty, and the brutal reality of loving when you’ve never been shown how.
Each character carries their own wounds, some visible, some buried, and as their stories unfold, those wounds shape the choices they make, the people they become, and the love they fight for. What begins as Willow’s story of survival and self-worth expands into something far bigger, a found family bound by pain, protection, and an unspoken promise: no one gets left behind.
But this series was written for a reason. As a reader, I grew tired of investing in a slow burn, watching two people fight their way to each other, only for their relationship to be wrapped up in a single chapter or epilogue. After everything they endured, I wanted more. I wanted to see what happened after they chose each other. How they love. How they fight. How they break… and rebuild together. How they fit into family, into chaos, into real life. So, I wrote the series I wanted to read.
This isn’t just about falling in love, it’s about what comes next. Across the series, you’ll follow intertwined journeys through multiple perspectives on the same timeline including Willow, Braxton, Noah, Harley, Finn, and others whose voices deepen the world as it grows darker… and stronger. This isn’t a soft romance. It’s messy. Confronting. Addictive. It’s about broken people learning how to love without destroying each other. And the truth that even the most fractured hearts… can rise.
Series Note
The Rise of the Broken Heart series is currently planned as an eleven-book series.
The primary story arc will conclude with Book 8, scheduled for release in the first half of 2027. Following the conclusion of the main arc, the series will continue with two additional books set approximately ten years later, following Noah, Willow's foster brother, as he embarks on his own journey at eighteen years of age.
An additional companion novel, Book 7.5, will introduce and follow a new family first introduced in Books 6 and 7. This story is designed as an optional side novel and can be enjoyed independently after reading book 6 & 7. Readers who do not connect with these characters may choose to skip it without impacting their understanding or enjoyment of the main series storyline.
Reasons we will win you over
Willow Anderson has spent most of her life surviving.
Raised in an abusive foster system, she learned early that trust was dangerous, love was temporary, and the only person she could truly rely on was herself.
Quietly resilient beneath her tough exterior, Willow has spent years carrying the weight...
Braxton is the kind of man people make assumptions about.
Covered in tattoos, carrying more scars than he talks about, and never far from trouble, he gives the impression of someone who lives life by his own rules. Confident, stubborn, and fiercely protective, Braxton isn't interested in fitting into anyone else's...
Blake Harrington is everything Willow believes she should want.
Successful, intelligent, ambitious, and polished, he represents a world she has never been part of, a world of stability, opportunity, and carefully planned futures. Charming and attentive, Blake knows exactly what to say and how to make people feel...
Noah Smith has spent most of his life learning that people leave.
Passed from home to home, abuse after abuse, disappointment after disappointment, he has grown up believing that love always comes with conditions and that eventually everyone finds a reason to walk away.
Beneath his cheeky grin, endless...
Why Readers Love The Series
This is such a great emotional story. Willow is such a strong surviver who has endured many challenges throughout her life, stuck in the foster system fighting to survive. Willow ends in some trouble and when she's given a second...
This is such a great emotional story. Willow is such a strong surviver who has endured many challenges throughout her life, stuck in the foster system fighting to survive. Willow ends in some trouble and when she's given a second...
Hope takes you on a journey in this one, and I didn’t know what was going to happen next. You feel right along with Willow, and for Noah. Barb is really something! She shouldn’t have foster kids at all! I’m going to go out there and...
Hope takes you on a journey in this one, and I didn’t know what was going to happen next. You feel right along with Willow, and for Noah. Barb is really something! She shouldn’t have foster kids at all! I’m going to go out there and...
I absolutely loved this book and wish to thank the author, Hope (who I asked to surprise me when I ordered one of her books) for wowing me with this super impressive debut! And that ending… holy crap! 😱😭 I hope karma comes into...
I absolutely loved this book and wish to thank the author, Hope (who I asked to surprise me when I ordered one of her books) for wowing me with this super impressive debut! And that ending… holy crap! 😱😭 I hope karma comes into...
Loved this book
Character Development for Willie was amazing.
Following her story of growing out of the justice system...
Loved this book
Character Development for Willie was amazing.
Following her story of growing out of the justice system...
Wicked Games by Hope Everly is more than just a story; it’s an emotional journey that quietly unfolds through Willow’s experiences. While many readers will empathise with her struggles, there’s a raw authenticity to Willow that allows...
Wicked Games by Hope Everly is more than just a story; it’s an emotional journey that quietly unfolds through Willow’s experiences. While many readers will empathise with her struggles, there’s a raw authenticity to Willow that allows...
I loved this story from start to finish. It follows Willow as she navigates life in the foster system and the things she has had to do and become to survive. Hopes writing was raw, emotional and powerful, leaving me emersed in the...
I loved this story from start to finish. It follows Willow as she navigates life in the foster system and the things she has had to do and become to survive. Hopes writing was raw, emotional and powerful, leaving me emersed in the...