Partridge Up a Pear Tree (and Dragons)

She loves him. He loathes her, and rightfully so. Not even time heals wounds this jagged and misaligned.

Eighteen-year-old Joey Partridge doesn’t do conflict. Negative tension stresses her out. Yelling sends her verbally vomiting every thought in her head and bursting into tears. Which, as a normally confident, world-wise daughter of globetrotting dragon scientists, is just embarrassing.

It also wrecked her relationship with drummer-boy Slade Adler, her best friend and romantic addiction. A year ago, she publicly fell apart, blamed Slade for something he didn’t do, and destroyed his future plans and their relationship.

Now all dragon scientists have been called to Newfoundland to study an incubating seadragon egg. Slade will be there, and he’s not shy about making it clear how much he hates her. Joey’s best option?

Avoid him at all costs.

Only weird things are going on in Newfoundland. Shady figures keep sabotaging the scientists and sneaking into the cove holding the egg. When a local magic-handler convinces Joey to help investigate, her first clue points a little too close to…Slade.

No way will Joey risk getting him into trouble again. Not when deep inside she still wants him back. Joey must solve the mystery, protect the egg and Slade, and convince him to forgive her for her past mistakes. All while avoiding any sign of conflict.

She is so screwed.

Release Date: November 1st 2025

Partridge on GoodReads

Partridge on Amazon

Since I couldn’t bolt, I froze. So did time and the world as all my emotions, thoughts, and sense-of-self drained into a horrified puddle under the table.

Slade scanned the room, eyes narrowed, expression flat. Which didn’t mean he was mad yet as he hadn’t noticed me. It was just his usual expression.

As I watched him, my alarm morphed into something different. Something fascinated.

It’d been so long, and there he was. Oh. So. Familiar. And yet different at the same time.

The noise of the restaurant dissipated into a background hum, and the others at the table faded. My breath slipped out in a wistful sigh. I leaned forward on the table, knocking more of the shredded napkin into my lap.

Even with his painful-like-stabbing-my-own-chest-with-a-knife hatred between us, I’d missed him. Really, really missed him.

He was still slender, but his shoulders were wider than I remembered. He’d shaved the sides of his dark hair short, almost buzzed, but the top was longer, falling to one side in a thick, messy curtain. His face was still straight lines and angles with high cheekbones, but that was fuller too. He’d become more of…well…himself. Beautiful and compelling in a never-smiles, furrowed-brows, blank-stare kind of way.

He was dressed in a long-sleeved tee for a band named Earth Crisis, ripped jeans, battered Chucks, and had a dozen or so black leather bracelets around his right wrist.

Slade’s attention settled on me. Hurt flashed through his eyes followed by the entire list of synonyms for hate plus all related verbs. His frown turned into a curled-lip sneer, his eyes narrowed into lasers of loathing. He folded his arms. I gulped back a bone-deep apprehension mixed with a longing for things to be different and a heavy, drowning sadness for what I’d lost.