IRIS

Ever since she was little, Iris believed happiness meant a house filled with laughter, love, and parents who stayed. But life fractured early: a quiet divorce, a father who disappeared across the country, and a mother drowning under work, debt, and bottles. When her mother remarried, Iris hoped stability had finally come - until the man she called stepfather turned their home into a place of fear and silence. By seventeen, grief and trauma have carved Iris into someone who barely speaks, someone who has learned to survive by being invisible. After tragedy strikes and her mother dies, Iris is sent across the country to live with the father she hasn't seen in years - and his new family. Trying to start over, Iris enrolls in Riverside High, where she plans to do what she has always done: keep her head down, excel quietly, and avoid forming attachments. She hides her face behind mask and an oversized hoodie. But fate has other plans the day she meets Noah Anderson - the school's brilliant star student with a reputation for being cold, unreachable, and utterly uninterested in anyone.

IRIS is a story about trauma, rebuilding trust, chosen family, finding herself and the slow, aching courage it takes to open up again and maybe fall in love- even when every part of you says it's safer not to.