April is officially booked, and this month’s read is For Whom the Belle Tolls by Jaysea Lynn.

And honestly? This felt inevitable.

Because if you’re going to hand me a romantasy set in the Afterlife, laced with demons, magic, sarcasm, heat, and the kind of premise that practically winks while dragging you by the throat, I am not going to pretend I have self-control. I never claimed to be that virtuous.

So yes, my loves, for April book club we are going straight to Hell. Very prettily. Very willingly.

For a little background, For Whom the Belle Tolls is the first book in Jaysea Lynn’s Hell’s Belles series. It follows Lily, who arrives in the Afterlife expecting the worst and instead finds something far stranger: deities in coffee shops, fae slipping between realms, and Hell itself becoming the last place she expects to carve out a purpose. She ends up working among demons, routing souls to their proper circles with customer service skills, sarcasm, and more attitude than most people bring to the land of the living. And, naturally, there is Bel, a demon general with a dangerously sexy voice and the kind of connection that starts as healing friendship and threatens to ignite into something much hotter.

This one also has a fun bit of bookish lore behind it. Jaysea Lynn built For Whom the Belle Tolls as a prequel to her Hell’s Belles TikTok comedy-drama world, which makes this feel like one of those rare books born from internet chaos and then sharpened into a full romantasy with real emotional weight. It’s also been billed by the publisher as a “hotter-than-hell romantasy,” and it landed as an instant New York Times and USA Today bestseller, which tells you this book showed up already wearing heels and kicking the door open.

So why did I choose this one for April?

Because it sounds like exactly the kind of delicious trouble I want us sinking our claws into together.

I wanted a pick that felt darkly playful. Something with bite. Something with a wicked premise and enough tension to keep us flipping pages at irresponsible hours. I wanted fantasy, heat, and a world that doesn’t just flirt with the strange, but fully climbs into its lap. This book feels like it brings all of that to the table with a grin.

It also sounds like it has that very specific flavor I love: a heroine with attitude, a supernatural setting with teeth, and romance threaded through danger, emotion, and just enough infernal temptation to keep everybody acting up. Frankly, that is book club catnip around here.

And let’s be honest, there is something deeply satisfying about a title like For Whom the Belle Tolls. It’s clever. It’s flirty. It knows exactly what it’s doing. The whole thing already feels dressed in black, smelling faintly of smoke and bad decisions.

Which, as you know, is a strong selling point for me.

So here’s the vibe I want us bringing into April’s discussion:

Come for the Afterlife worldbuilding.
Stay for the demon general.
Remain emotionally compromised because the chemistry decided to get feral.

I’m especially excited to dig into the book’s tone with all of you, because it seems to balance humor, heart, fantasy, and spice in a way that can be ridiculously fun to talk about in a group setting. I want to know who your favorites are, what scenes had you kicking your feet or clutching your chest, whether the premise delivered everything you wanted, and of course whether Bel is worth the fall.

Spoiler: I suspect the answer is yes.

If you’re reading along with us this month, now is the time to grab your copy, mark your tabs, and prepare your notes like the unhinged little scholars of smut and story that we are.

April’s book club is going to be a little chaotic, a little fiery, and exactly how I like it.

See you in Hell. 💋

Content Warnings:

Please check content warnings before reading. Broad content warnings for For Whom the Belle Tolls include explicit sexual content, death and grief, terminal illness, violence, blood/gore, religious trauma, child abuse/neglect, sexual assault themes, self-harm and suicide references, torture, and other heavy trauma-related material. This list is based on reader-submitted warnings and may not be exhaustive.

Reminders

• Both on Fable and in Discord, be sure to mark your posts as spoilers if they contain spoilers!

• Not everyone is down with having a surprise ruined (I love a good spoiler, so spoil away, but others may not be so cool about it).

• KU has the book available if you have room in your library!

• It’s also on Audible, although I’ve heard mixed things about the quality of the voice actors.

KU has the book available if you have room in your library!

It’s also on audible!

If you need a physical copy, you can get yours here (yes, it’s an affiliate link... and yes, I get a very small commission. You pay the same either way, but the small commission helps fund this discord! Thank you for your support!) Happy reading!

🖤 See you inside the pages,
- Tiffany (aka That Lit Witch)

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Some women are made to survive the dark.

Some are made to rule inside it.

And some are born carrying a kind of power that was never meant to stay hidden, no matter how tightly the world tries to bind it.

Alicia Kingsleigh is the heartbeat at the center of Sins of Underland.

Not soft prey. Not an innocent little thing wandering into danger with no teeth of her own. She is desire and defiance braided together. A woman with chaos in her blood, hunger under her skin, and more power sleeping inside her than the people around her realize at first glance. She is the kind of woman who can be underestimated only once.

She enters this story already carrying weight. Survival. Want. Fury. Need. The kind of loneliness that does not always look lonely from the outside. The kind of ache that learns how to wear lipstick, hold eye contact, and keep moving anyway.

She is not untouched by the world.

That is part of what makes her dangerous.

Check out the full Post from the Shadow Archives

(Cross-posted on my Substack)

There is a certain kind of danger in letting people too close to a book before it is finished.

Not because the story is fragile.

Because it bites.

Because some stories are not built like tidy little things meant to be held at arm’s length. Some are made of teeth and silk, ruin and longing, blood-warm hunger pressed beneath skin. Some do not arrive quietly. They prowl. They stalk. They sink in claw by claw until suddenly they are living under your ribs, breathing smoke into your lungs, asking far more of you than you ever meant to give.

Sins of Underland has become that kind of story for me.

It is not just a draft on a screen anymore. It is a living realm. A fever. A place with its own pulse. A place that has spilled far beyond the page and into sketchbooks, fabric swatches, artwork, collector details, whispered notes, page inserts, overlays, gowns, relics, and all the dangerous little pieces of beauty that seem to bloom whenever a world digs its claws in deep enough.

And because of that, I’ve been thinking carefully about what kind of behind-the-scenes content I want to share here.

I love seeing the private bones of a story. The worldbuilding notes. The half-feral character details. The lore fragments. The moodboards. The early concepts. The lines that arrive like a blade to the throat and make you stop breathing for a second. I know many of you love that too.

But I also do not want to crack this world wide open too soon.

I do not want to hand over every secret while the doors are still locked.

Some things should be discovered in the dark, exactly as they were meant to be.

So this is where I meet that tension in the middle.

Welcome to The Shadow Archive.

This will be my spoiler-safe behind-the-scenes series for Sins of Underland, where I share curated glimpses of the world, the characters, the atmosphere, the craft, and the beautiful dangerous things growing around this book, without giving away the secrets that are meant to land with their full weight on the page.

Think of it as stepping into my private archive with a candle in one hand and a key in the other.

Not every drawer will open.

But enough of them will.

What waits inside the archive

With the Kickstarter for Sins of Underland launching in just two weeks, this felt like the perfect time to finally start pulling back the veil and showing you the shape of what has been haunting me.

Not the whole beast.

But the gleam of its teeth.

Over the next stretch, I’ll be sharing pieces of the world in the way I think dark fantasy should be shared: lush, dangerous, obsessive, and just restrained enough to leave you wanting more.

Inside The Shadow Archive, you’ll be getting things like:

• Redacted character dossiers with curated details about the people haunting this story, the kind of details that make you choose a favorite long before you should

• Setting features from places like Underland, the Shadow Court, Blacktide Shore, and other corners of the realm that feel less like locations and more like living things with mouths

• Lore fragments and court records that deepen the world without ripping open the mysteries too soon

• Lines from the draft that taste like threat, temptation, obsession, and the sort of promise no one sane should trust

• Writer’s desk confessions on building tension, chemistry, worldbuilding, multi-POV hunger, and the chaos of writing a story that keeps trying to become more than a story

• Original fantasy gowns and wearable art inspired by the world of Underland itself, because this realm does not stay neatly on the page for me and has already started spilling into silk, structure, shadow, and bone

• Artwork and visual development shaping the look and feel of the realm, its people, and the atmosphere wrapped around them

• Sneak peeks at special edition details and collector relics, including ideas for page inserts, overlays, visual extras, and the kinds of beautiful little temptations I have been building around this project

• and for paid subscribers, a few deeper locked drawers with extra notes, annotated excerpts, visual development, and more decadent scraps from behind the veil

Because Sins of Underland was never meant to be only words to me.

It is world.

It is texture.

It is black water under a dead sky.

It is the scent of smoke and frost and forbidden things.

It is the gleam of a blade, the curl of a grin that should make you run and absolutely will not, the shift of power in a room just before everything goes deliciously wrong.

It is a realm of dangerous men, sharp hunger, dark bargains, and a woman standing at the center of it all with chaos in her blood.

And with the Kickstarter almost here, I want to start sharing enough for you to feel the pulse of it before the campaign opens its mouth.

Enough to see what kind of world this is.

Enough to understand that this story is being built not only as a book, but as an experience. A full-bodied thing. A realm with its own visual language, collector details, atmosphere, and artifacts.

Enough to make it very, very hard to look away.

So in the coming days, I’ll be opening the archive a little further.

You’ll see glimpses of the people who stalk these pages.

The settings that breathe.

The gowns and wearable pieces born from the realm.

The art, relics, and collector details taking shape around the story.

And yes, a few lines from the dark.

Just not every secret.

Not yet.

Before the gates open...

If you’re already following this project, thank you for being here at the edge of it with me.

And if this is your first time stepping into Sins of Underland, let this be your warning and your invitation both:

You are arriving just before the gates open.

The Kickstarter launches this Spring.

The archive is waking up now.

And I have every intention of making the wait feel exquisitely cruel.

Up next, you’ll get your first deep dive into Underland itself and your first Character Dossier of the FMC herself: Alicia Kingsleigh.

A Quiet Note Before I Return

I wanted to leave a public note here before anything else resumes.

I was gone longer than I ever intended to be. What began as a short trip became something entirely different...time spent with family in Hong Kong during loss, grief, ritual, and remembrance. It was a season that changed me in ways I’m still understanding.

I don’t want to summarize it here, because some stories deserve more space than a caption or an update. I’ve written a longer, deeply personal piece on Substack...one that speaks honestly about where I’ve been, what I experienced, and how grief, ritual, and love reshaped me.

It’s called Until Our Next Chat.

If you’ve ever loved someone deeply.
If you’ve ever lost someone too soon.
If you’ve ever needed words to sit beside your grief rather than explain it away...this piece is for you.

I’m easing back slowly. Gently. With care.
Thank you for your patience. Thank you for holding space.

You can read the full reflection here

A decade in the making. A world waking in the dark. And four demons who were never meant to let her go.

There are stories you write.
And then there are stories that haunt you.

For over a decade, Sins of Underland has lived in the shadows with me -
scratched into notebooks, rewritten, rebuilt, torn apart and stitched together again.
A world with claws and teeth, refusing to die no matter how many times life demanded I set it aside.

I kept telling myself I’d publish it someday.

This year, I stopped saying “someday.”

I refuse to wait a moment longer…
I chose to finally open the gates of Underland.

And today… I can finally reveal it:

My first full-length novel: SINS OF UNDERLAND.

Dark romantasy.
Why-choose.
Demon magic.
Shadow-kissed desire.
Extreme spice that builds slow and breaks fast.
A heroine who was never meant to survive -
and four men who ruin that plan instantly.

The Story

Alicia Kingsleigh

She was never meant to find Underland.
She was never meant to fall through its jaws.
And she was definitely never meant to feel what she feels when four dangerous beings turn toward her at once.

But some girls aren’t claimed by fate.
They wake it.

The Men Who Feel Her Arrival

Malrick - the Shadowborn Archdemon

Darkness incarnate.
Velvet-voiced ruin.
The reason mortals fear the dark.

“If she asked, I could show her what shadows can do to a body…how they hold, tease, take…

And gods, I want her to ask.”

Obryn - the Fireborn Demon

Chaos in muscle and heat.
A temper that burns.
A need that scorches.

“Gods, you are a mouthy little beast… just you wait… I’ll have you gasping my name with my hand in your hair and fire licking up your spine.”

Kaelith — the Frostborn Demon

Cold, controlled, devastating.
The one who doesn’t break -
until she tempts him to.

“She doesn’t know what it means when ice begins to crack.
But fuck, I'm going to enjoy watching her do it.

Sinclaire - the Half Demon, Half Dark Fae Prince

Elegant. Dangerous. Wickedly patient. Devilishly mad.
A man who doesn’t take lovers -
he takes obsessions.

“She doesn’t understand what it means to be wanted by four monsters.

We don’t share. But for her?

We’d tear each other apart just to be the one she moans for first.”

Alicia - Her Awakening

She shouldn’t want them.
She shouldn’t feel the pulse of magic between her legs when they look at her.
She shouldn’t crave the danger they breathe.

But she does.

And she’s done pretending she doesn’t.

About These Early Chapters - Read Before You Descend

Before you take your first step into Underland, you need to know something:

These chapters are the rawest form of this story.
Unedited. Unpolished. Unrestrained.
Written in the dark the same way Underland came to me over the last decade —
messy, hungry, wild, and real.

You are reading Sins of Underland exactly as it spilled out of me:
the feral edges, the magic that bites, the lines that might shift or sharpen later.

This is the version that breathes fire and shadow before anyone softens it.

What Happens Next

By the end of December, the full manuscript will be with my editor -
ready to be reshaped, refined, sharpened, and carved into the final form you’ll hold in your hands.

And then?

We build something bigger.

Spring 2026 - The Official Book Release

The final, fully edited version of Sins of Underland will launch in Spring 2026 through a Kickstarter campaign -
with all the dark, beautiful extras this world deserves:

✨ Special edition hardbacks
✨ Signed inserts and prints
✨ Full character art
✨ Exclusive maps
✨ Kickstarter-only bonuses
✨ Foiled covers + sprayed edges
✨ Possibly… NSFW art upgrades
✨ And more I’m not allowed to tease yet

But we’ll talk about all that deliciousness later.

Right now?

Right now you’re getting the first look.

The first breath.
The first cracks in the darkness.
The unfiltered version long before editors, printers, and the world see it.

The version Underland wanted you to have.

Why Announce Now? Because…

On December 1st, Chapter One finally drops.

Paid Subscribers will receive:

• A private Gumroad access link

• A 100% off subscriber coupon

• A BookFunnel download you can read on ANY device

• Exclusive author notes

• Early lore

• The first taste of Underland’s bite

And then?

We descend together, week by week.

Every chapter.
Every revelation.
Every moment she tempts them past the point of control.

A Note on What I’ll Share Publicly

Yes - I’ll still tease.

I’ll still share
whispers,
snippets,
lines that taste like heat and danger,
and little flashes of Alicia and the monsters circling her.

I’ll let the world glimpse the shadows.
I’ll give everyone tiny, wicked bites of Underland to keep them hungry.

But the full chapters?
The real descent?
The raw, unedited, unrestrained story?

Those belong to you -
my subscribers,
my inner circle,
the ones willing to step deeper than the rest.

If anyone wants more than a tease…
they’ll have to come into the dark with us.

A Decade in the Making. A Realm Waking in the Dark.

This book has lived inside me for over ten years.

And now it’s time to let it breathe.

To let it bare fangs.
To let it seduce.
To let it devour.
To let it live.

On December 1st, you step into Underland.
And trust me…

Underland has been waiting for you.

(Cross-posted on Substack and Patreon)