Hopelessly seeking Happily Ever Afters’s Reviews > Storm > Status Update

I feel lost. There's all of these side characters that must be from different books and/or series. This was listed as a standalone and I'm p¡ssed to find out that it clearly is not a standalone. Why do authors do this?!?!? It's taken me forever to get to this point in the book because I keep getting lost wondering, 'Who is that,' and trying to link characters together. GRR.