The Third Chime

The Girl in the Between

By: M.P. Sloane

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

When every version of you demands a vote, who decides who you become?

The Between doesn’t want Mara broken—it wants her chosen.

When the sea begins counting in deliberate waves and the lighthouse across the water starts breathing, Mara Keswick realizes Hollowvale didn’t just traumatize her—it marked her.
The first sign is subtle: a wrongness in the tide, a whisper in the pipes, a reflection that lags behind her movements.
The second sign is impossible: a crack widening across the horizon, and a silhouette shaped like her stepping through the seam in the world.
With Elara and Rowan at her side—and the Child who represents the parts of her she once abandoned—Mara is pulled into the Between, a shifting realm built of unmade choices, fractured versions of herself, and futures she was too afraid to want.
Each room tests a piece of her: stillness, risk, desire, identity.
Each version of Mara demands a vote in who she becomes next.
And at the center of it all waits a version of her who whispers:
“Let me relieve you of choice.”
To return home—and to claim a future with Elara—Mara must step into the final room and say aloud the one truth she’s never dared to want.
Perfect for fans of V.E. Schwab, Nina LaCour, and character-driven supernatural fantasy with deep emotional stakes.