Reading the River

By Melissa Brooke Ambrose

Tessa Sterling has built her reputation on dissecting desire-she's Louisville's sharpest literary critic, and she treats her own life like the novels she loves: full of transgression, drama, and just enough chaos to keep things interesting.

Then she meets Jonah Hale.

Soft-spoken, impossibly genteel, and secretly drowning in debt, Jonah is nothing like the men Tessa usually collects. He's a warlock from an old magical family, using his family's temperamental sigils to scrape together rent money while hiding his financial ruin behind good manners and dry humor. When their eyes meet in a dusty bookshop, the spark between them is immediate-and complicated.

As Tessa pursues Jonah, she stumbles into a hidden world of magic-users, each with secrets as dangerous as their powers. Jonah's debts have pulled him into a risky scheme involving stolen sigils, and when the fence goes wrong, his fragile world crumbles. But the real danger lies with the Breckenridges, a powerful family of enchanters blackmailing Jonah to deliver a priceless artifact-or face destruction.

Tessa insists on helping, believing she can write her way through any crisis. But when Jonah cuts a desperate deal behind her back, she's forced to question whether she's just another reckless choice in his unstable life. To have any future together, Jonah must confront the fears that drive him to self-sabotage-and Tessa must decide if love is worth the chaos.

Reading the River is a steamy, spellbinding romance where passion collides with magic, and two people learning that the most dangerous transgression might be letting someone truly see you.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HFWBWGTW
• ISBN13: 9798235813618
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Woolmonger Publishing
• Length: 356 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 8.0"