Diary of an Almost Perfect StepSister

Alison Warner had the kind of life that was polarizing-either you'd think she was the luckiest girl in the world, or you'd want to put her out of her misery. No in between.

At seventeen-two months out of high school, she's supposed to pick her future like it's a curated setlist: clean, pretty, approved.

Western University means legacy. Pre-law. Her father's approval. A neat, obedient life she can perform in her sleep.

New York means dance. Freedom. Distance. The kind you can pretend is reinvention until it starts eating you alive.

So Alison does what she always does when life stops obeying her rules: she goes backwards.
She locks her bedroom door. Checks it twice. Then drags a white box out of her closet: four padlocked diaries, one key, and four years of "being good" recorded in ink like evidence. If she can reread the girl she used to be-thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen-maybe she'll understand what she actually wants... and what she's been trained to want.

Because once upon a time, she lived in a Toronto penthouse in the sky. Out of sight, out of reach, out of mind. Meals made specially for her. A town car. A private Christian all-girls school. The schedule of someone who works two full-time jobs and still moonlights as a show dog on weekends. Thirteen-year-old Alison loved living with her head in the clouds and her hands soaked in Purell.

Then it rained in the kingdom, and boy did it pour.

Divorce. A move. A blended family that looks wholesome on paper and feels like a war zone in practice. Stratford isn't just smaller than Toronto-it's louder, messier, and obsessed with watching who you are when you think no one's looking.

And then the universe adds the punchline: Halloween night. Seven Minutes in Heaven. A barn closet. A kiss with a cocky boy who only knows her as "Ali"... right before she learns he's about to be her stepbrother.

In the dark, he murmurs, "Try not to swoon, Alice."