Love Spells by Linda Casebeer

Angelique grew up as a ward of the court with one parent abandoning her and the other an alcoholic, ill-equipped to raise a child. The story begins as Angelique turns eighteen and is released from the institution and the court system that have dictated everything about her life for years. She knows how to shoot a gun and like the girl with the dragon tattoo, she wants to get even with the people who put here there. For the first time in her life, she can choose where she lives. She has set up accounts on Facebook and dating sites and ten men have invited her to move in with them, even though she has never met any of them in person. Angelique is a beautiful young green-eyed redhead that men will always find attractive, and she knows what she wants. Unfortunately for her story, men will always find her attractive and she will always be looking for true love.

She feels empowered by walking out the door of the institution and leaves without a job, a photo ID, a social security card, a bank account, or any idea of what the men she has flirted with online are really like. She first makes her way to the house of her childhood friend, Ashley, the fourth generation in a family of psychics where her mother casts love spells in exchange for donations and wants Ashley to join the family business. Ashley is a teenage mother with other ideas. After spending a few days with Ashley and hooking up with Ashley’s neighbor, she finds the first of the men she has encountered online and moves in with him and his buddy in an abandoned lake cottage. She falls in love with Andrew but feels betrayed when she discovers that Andrew and his buddy are out for a good time, but he doesn’t intend to marry her.

Angry at the people who had controlled her life, and angry at Andrew and his buddy for what she sees as betrayal, she goes back online. Hoping for an immediate response, she lets three men know where she is and that she can be picked up that afternoon at the beach along the lake. The first one to arrive is Chuck who has promised her a trip to Disney World as he delivers product he has grown to customers in Florida. By the time she arrives in Florida she has fallen in love with Chuck who disappears during a transaction, leaving his truck and Angelique at the Days Inn in Orlando. After several days, she is forced to leave the hotel. She wants to stay in Florida to wait for him. She asks Ashley’s mother Louise to cast a love spell to bring Chuck back. She discovers she is pregnant. She is 99% but not 100% sure Chuck is the father. She vows to continue to wait for him, and goes to stay with Ashley’s crazy cousin Cynthia, also a spell caster, who lives near Orlando.

Angelique’s story continues in serial form each week with readers voting on what happens next in the story on the website serialities.com.