Nocticadia

Keri Lake is an American self-published author of dark romance, fantasy, and gothic novels. She operates a large gothic reading group on Facebook called “The Gothiphiles.” She describes her stories as “gritty, with antiheroes that walk the line of good and bad, and feisty heroines who bring them to their knees” (“About.” Keri Lake). Her plotlines center romance and often feature love interests who are at odds—they can’t be together, they shift from enemies to lovers, or their relationship is taboo. Lake’s works also fit the new adult genre, as the main female protagonists are young women in their early twenties who participate in sexual relationships.

Lake is the author of the Juniper Unraveling series, the Sandman duet, the Vigilantes series, the Nightshade duology, and five standalones: The Isle of Sin and Shadows, Master of Salt & Bones, Ripple Effect, Absolution, and Nocticadia. Her most recent novel, Anathema, is the first in the Eating Woods fantasy duology. In comparison, Nocticadia is an urban-gothic romance with some science-fiction elements, as Lake fabricates different parasites and diseases to be studied by the central characters.

Lake’s marketing strategy involves a popular contemporary trend of publicizing the popular tropes in her novels, such as enemies to lovers (as the love interests initially antagonize each other), slow burn (wherein the romance takes time to develop), forced proximity (where the protagonists are forced to spend time together), as well as less frequently used tropes like “one bed” (meaning that the characters will, at some point, be forced to sleep in a room with only one bed, which they will share).