Title: Lead Me HomeAuthor: Catherine Bybee
Series: Queen Anne Hill #1
Pages: 351
Publication Date: June 9, 2026
Publisher: Montlake
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Contemporary / Romantic Suspense
Synopsis:
Luna Canning trusts numbers more than people-and for good reason. As a forensic accountant who specializes in exposing fraud, she knows numbers never deceive, unlike the toxic family she's spent a lifetime trying to escape. Now living in her grandmother's Victorian home, Luna has built a carefully ordered life behind walls she thought were unbreakable.
When her car is stolen from an airport parking lot, former FBI agent turned PI Nate Warren steps in to help-and proves more dangerous to her defenses than any thief. Despite Luna's iron-clad rules about mixing business with pleasure, their chemistry ignites, and for the first time, she considers letting someone past her guard. But just as their relationship begins to blossom, Luna's manipulative mother arrives unannounced, dragging with her a dangerous man and decades of unresolved trauma that threaten everything Luna has built.
Now Luna must confront the ghosts of her past-both metaphorical and possibly literal, as strange occurrences in her historic home suggest she's not alone. With a violent threat looming and her heart on the line, Luna discovers that sometimes the hardest person to trust is yourself.
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I’ve read and loved several of Catherine Bybee’s series over the years, so I went into Lead Me Home knowing I was in for a treat. The first book in the Queen Anne Hill series, the story follows Luna, a forensic accountant who has built a carefully controlled life after a difficult past, and Nate, a former FBI agent turned PI who ends up working with her. What starts as a professional partnership slowly turns into something deeper, while Luna is forced to confront both a current threat and unresolved trauma from her past.
Luna is a layered and compelling protagonist who is sharp and capable, especially in her career, but she’s also vulnerable and sensitive. There are a lot of layers to her, and she hasn’t had the easiest life. Watching her learn to trust, both in other people and in herself, was fantastic and showed a lot of growth. Nate is great, too! He complements her well without overshadowing her. He is steady, supportive, and patient, and he’s a pretty swoon-worthy MMC, though he’s dealing with his own complicated past. Their romance, of course, is my favorite part of the story. It’s a slow burn with a ton of chemistry and with a lot of focus on trust, communication, and emotional safety. I love how their relationship grows so you get to see them become partners and work together as they slowly fall for each other.
The secondary characters are great, too. Well, most of them. lol Luna’s life always takes a turn for the worse when her mother comes back into town, which, of course, happens at the most inopportune time. But Luna has a good support system, both human and non, as she deals with all of the chaos. I love her connection to her grandmother and the house Luna and her siblings inherited from her. The house is almost a character in itself, and it has a lot of personality, as do its human and non-human inhabitants.
The plot does a great job balancing the romance and characters’ emotional journeys with the suspenseful plot. The investigation into fraud and the other dangers Luna faces are intriguing, and there’s a paranormal element added to the mix that I enjoyed. And the story has some powerful themes about healing, reclaiming your life, and learning that it is okay to want more than just to survive. It delves into complicated family dynamics, emotional scars, and what it means to build a safe and fulfilling future.
New York Times bestselling author Catherine Bybee was raised in Washington State, but after graduating from high school, she moved to Southern California with hopes of becoming a movie star. After growing bored with waiting tables, she returned to school and became a registered nurse, spending most of her career in urban emergency rooms. She now writes full-time and has penned the International Bestselling Not Quite series, the MacCoinnich Time Travel series as well as the Internationally Bestselling Weekday Brides series.
