Danielle L. Jensen

Danielle L. Jensen spent years working in Calgary's oil and gas industry after a finance degree before going back to school for English literature and self-publishing her debut, Stolen Songbird, in 2013 — the book that became the start of The Malediction Trilogy, a young-adult fantasy romance about a human girl chosen as bride to a troll king's son. A traditional publisher picked it up within a year, launching a career that has since produced two more major fantasy series: Dark Shores, a Roman-conquest-and-pirates epic told across two converging couples' storylines, and The Bridge Kingdom, a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers romantasy about a spy married into the kingdom she was sent to destroy. Jensen's books share a throughline of strong-willed heroines navigating political and romantic danger in richly built fantasy worlds, with The Bridge Kingdom in particular becoming one of the breakout romantasy series of the 2020s after being picked up for wide release by a major publisher. New readers with a taste for court intrigue and slow-burn romance should start with The Bridge Kingdom; those who prefer a higher-magic, dual-POV epic will find that in Dark Shores. Jensen, now a number-one New York Times bestseller published in more than twenty languages, continues to write from Calgary, where she lives with her family.