Quints = FIVE

I’m not sure where I stumbled on it, and for the most part it’s a just one of those things that I accept for what it is.

So what is it?

It’s a soft mention in review that knocks Colette’s Book down by a star essentially because she’s not one of the quintuplets. And hey, that’s cool. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and this one is valid. Heck, in my book review cheat sheet I encourage reviewers to tell other readers why they chose the star rating that they did, so this goes hand in hand with that advice. It’s all good.

But as I looked at which books got downloaded in 2019 and which ones didn’t, I feel like I need to give the backstory on why Colette was given the book #5 slot.

Yes, I do know that quints = five.

However, not all ebook retailers have the ability to catalogue half numbered books.

Miss Cavanaugh (Cris & Daveigh’s wedding story) is book #3.5. On Kobo, it’s always been easy to find. On Amazon? Not so much. I was reminded by an Amazon rep just today that, for all the rumors to the contrary, their current system doesn’t recognize half-numbers.*

If you read the Kingsbrier Quintuplets in publication order, Miss Cavanaugh segues into Cavanaugh which is the prequel. It’s Ross & Rose’s slow-burn love story and one of my favorites. When it was published there was no way of linking the book on Amazon as #0.5 and it gets overlooked. On Kobo? Not so much.

(Score one for Kobo, you know? Because it’s not just my books this impacts. It’s every author, in every genre, who is publishing with them.)

The point is, Miss C and Cavanaugh are what they are; stories in between stories. And so is Colette.

Here’s the root difference.

A reader can skip Miss Cavanaugh and understand in Adam’s book that Daveigh and Cris have tied the knot. (But please don’t. It’s a sweet read). Cavanaugh is a second (and in my opinion better because I’d been writing longer) entry point into the Kingsbrier world, but you could still go from Daveigh’s book to Adam’s and not miss much.

But if you’re a series fan who loves Colette—especially one of the readers who pleaded for her to have her own book as soon as she was introduced—jumping from Adam’s book straight to Colton’s would be confusing. You need to see (er, read) how those scenes played out in Colette’s life. I hemmed and hawed about making Colette book #4.5. What it came down to was that if I did, fewer Kindle readers would know it existed. I’d already been through that twice. I still deal with the fall out of that choice every day. It’s like dressing my eight kids up for a family photo and then shoving two of them in the closet before we leave to meet the photographer.

So that's why there are six whole numbered books in the Kingsbrier Quintuplets instead of five. And if you didn't know that Miss Cavanaugh or Cavanaugh were available for your favorite device, now you do.

Happy reading!

*Yes, there is a convoluted process that would require me to un/renumber the books to whole numbers. Create new covers, only works in certain countries… And the copyrights were filed with the original series number so if there was ever a question of ownership? Let’s say it ain’t worth the headache. That’s why I chose not to go this route for now.