The Hex Files

After a string of break-ins hits Main Street, Fern Calloway casts a protective ward on Calloway's Curiosities — and accidentally catches Sheriff Beau Tanner mid-patrol, his hand on the shop door at the exact moment she casts. The curse it leaves him with is a compulsion toward radical honesty: Beau can't bluff a suspect, can't hold strategic silence, and reflexively discloses things he'd normally keep to himself, including his own feelings. For a sheriff mid-investigation, this is close to disastrous. Sustained proximity to Fern is what keeps the compulsion's severity manageable — without her nearby, it worsens.

That practical necessity pulls her into the case, and the two work it together: staged break-ins engineered by outside land speculator Roland Pike to scare Main Street owners into selling cheap. But proximity does what proximity does, and Beau's newly incurable honesty means Fern can't pretend not to notice what he's starting to feel for her — or keep dodging what she already knows about where her own heart has been since long before the curse.

At the confrontation, Beau — still cursed — lays out the evidence with total, compelled honesty, and his sincerity is what makes Pike's scheme collapse. Meaning what he says is also what breaks the curse. It does not, however, sort out everything else. This is book two of an ongoing slow-burn series: the mystery gets solved cleanly. The romance is still finding its footing, and not every heart in this one gets what it's hoping for by the last page.