Caroline Peckham & Susanne Valenti Books

Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti are sisters who write together from a countryside office in the south east of England, and their readers call them the Twisted Sisters. They are number one Wall Street Journal and Amazon bestsellers with more than fifteen million books sold, almost all of it built independently before the print rights were picked up by a major publisher. Their reputation rests on three things: cliffhangers that are genuinely unfair, characters designed to be hated before they are loved, and a willingness to let their heroines be as vicious as the men around them.

What defines the writing is escalation. Zodiac Academy: The Awakening is a reasonably normal length. By the middle of the series the books are enormous, the cast has tripled, and the stakes have moved from surviving a school year to controlling a kingdom. The point of view rotates through a large ensemble, including the antagonists, which is the trick that makes the series work. You spend enough time inside the heads of the boys tormenting the Vega twins that you understand them, and understanding them is what makes the eventual turn land. The humour is very dark and very English, and the sisters clearly enjoy putting their own characters through the worst possible day.

The setup: twin sisters Tory and Darcy discover they are changelings, the long-lost Vega heirs to the throne of Solaria, and enrol at Zodiac Academy to learn to use powers they never knew they had. Four powerful Fae students, the self-appointed Heirs to the same throne, decide the twins need to be broken before they can become a threat. It goes badly for everyone. The main sequence runs eight books plus Beyond the Veil and the continuation into the Restless Stars, and the spinoff Ruthless Boys of the Zodiac begins with Dark Fae, following Elise Callisto, a vampire who enrols at Aurora Academy to find out which of its four kings killed her brother Gareth. Same world, separate story, readable independently.

It is worth understanding how the sisters actually work, because it explains the output. They co-write full time from a shared office, splitting characters and viewpoints between them, which is why the ensemble voices stay distinct across thousands of pages. It also explains the release schedule, which for several years was faster than most solo authors manage across a decade. They have written outside Solaria too, including a contemporary dark romance line, but the Zodiac world is where the readership lives and where the sisters clearly have the most fun.

Heat and content both need flagging honestly. On the spice scale these sit at a 4 to 5, fully explicit, with why-choose relationships across most of the catalogue. More importantly, the bullying in the first two Zodiac Academy books is real bullying: sustained, physical, humiliating and not softened. There is dubious consent. Readers who are fine with dark content often still find books one and two hard going, and readers who are not fine with it should skip the series entirely rather than pushing through on the promise that it gets better. It does get better. That is not the same as it being for everyone.

They matter because they largely built the magical academy bully-romance lane that half the current indie market is now writing inside. The Solaria books proved that a series could run to fifteen-plus instalments, keep escalating, and hold an audience the entire way, and they proved it without traditional publishing support. Whatever you think of the content, the commercial achievement is remarkable and the enemies to lovers structure they use has been copied constantly since.

Where to start: Zodiac Academy: The Awakening, in publication order, no skipping. Most readers agree the series finds its real shape around the third book, and Ruthless Fae is where the tone shift becomes obvious, so if you are on the fence after book one the honest advice is to give it two more before deciding. Do not start with the spinoffs. Dark Fae reads fine on its own but it is much richer once you know Solaria, and the crossover cameos will be wasted on you otherwise.