Chasing Chaos

Love, friendship and betrayal in glamorous, yet often vicious, Hollywood.

Daphne Saito, a beautiful and talented Hollywood screenwriter, might look like she has the perfect life, but on the inside she's lost. She's wandered from one meaningless relationship to the next, and now-just as she breaks up with her longtime boyfriend Dan-she meets someone new, someone she could fall in love with. But Daphne, still traumatized by an accident involving her best friend, Greta, five years earlier, is afraid to love. Harm has always come to those close to her.

Over five life-changing days, Daphne lets her guard down and steps toward this new love. But trouble is never far behind. Dan, angry at Daphne's departure, has targeted an innocent young woman, someone close to Daphne's new love, as part of a plan for revenge. And an enigmatic woman from Daphne's past returns with a vendetta of her own. Danger is on the horizon for all of Daphne's friends-and for her.

Tana French meets Donna Tartt in this tense, evocative love story. And fans of Lisa Scottoline's BETRAYED will enjoy the strong female protagonists found in Pryal's novel.

I wasn't sure I was going to write a series set in the world of ENTANGLEMENT back when I was writing ENTANGLEMENT. But once the book was out, after every book event and when I met people who read the book, everyone seemed to ask, "What happens to Daphne?" And they were right. She deserved her own story.

In ENTANGLEMENT, the two main characters, Greta and Daphne, were just out of college and learning to explore the world beyond their friendship. At the beginning of CHASING CHAOS, they're both late twenty somethings, and Greta is about to get married. Their friendship has matured. Daphne, though, struggles to believe she is worthy of love. Sure, there is a love story, but this book is about a woman who has to learn to love herself first.

Because CHASING CHAOS is set five years after the end of ENTANGLEMENT, it very much stands alone as a story. And you can read CHASING CHAOS first without spoiling ENTANGLEMENT.

I will read any book except ones where the female characters are afterthoughts or non-existent. I love historical romance, urban fantasies, Booker Prize winners, SF (especially by women, and I wish there were more), Tana French (she's her own category), P.D. James (so is she), and of course that great big category called Women's Fiction.

A story of love and friendship, betrayal of trust, and learning to love oneself, set in glamorous-yet-treacherous Hollywood Hills.