karen herrick’s review of Queen of the Bay (The King's Ransom, #1) > Likes and Comments

The front material (page VI) shows five stories in the series with a disclaimer stating a significant part of the mystery will be resolved in Book III.

I made it through the third book. The mystery was amplified in the second book and resolved in the third as promised.

And the afterword in the third book by the author explained quite a bit of reasoning/background to the story/manuscript.

Correct. Mostly. That first scene with Queen Anne in Queen of the Bay (QOTB) serves as a bookend to the final scene of the fifth book, but most of the mystery is revealed in the third book (published Spring 2026). And nearly every loose end introduced in the first two books are resolved in the third.

You might want to view the first three books as a three act play of a slow-burn romance. QOTB is the setup. Longitude is the fun-and-games portion. And the King's Ransom is the bad-guys-closing-in component and has the strongest climax.

A much larger arc takes shape for the entirety of the five book series, but I won't spoil it by saying more for folks who haven't finished the third book.

As you consider your theories regarding the mystery, you might want to put them to pencil and paper to validate when you fully solved it (something I challenge readers at my book signings to do).