Erin Sterling

Erin Sterling is the pen name used by bestselling author Rachel Hawkins for her adult paranormal romance novels, creating witchy small-town romantic comedies that blend Southern charm, magic, humour, and genuinely swoony love stories set in charming fictional towns where witches, hexes, and magical mishaps coexist with everyday small-town life. Known for the Graves Glen series beginning with The Ex Hex (2021), Sterling crafts cosy paranormal romance that prioritizes warmth, wit, and character chemistry over darkness, creating books that appeal to readers seeking romance with magical elements delivered through accessible, humorous prose that feels like comfort reading.

The Graves Glen Series

Sterling's signature series is set in Graves Glen, a small Southern town with a significant witch population that maintains a careful balance between magical and non-magical residents. The town itself becomes a character across the series - its annual autumn festivals, its quirky community, its magical history - creating a setting readers return to across books.

The Ex Hex (2021) launches the series with Vivienne Jones, a witch whose teenage heartbreak over Rhys Penhallow led her to place a hex on him after their breakup. Now, nearly a decade later, Rhys returns to Graves Glen and the hex - which Vivi had forgotten about - starts causing magical chaos. The novel delivers the reunited lovers trope with witchy complications, blending the emotional weight of first love and unresolved feelings with humor about magical mishaps and the complications of small-town life where everyone knows everyone's history.

The Kiss Curse (2022) continues the series with a new central couple whilst maintaining the Graves Glen setting and community. Following Gwyn Jones - Vivi's cousin - and Cait MacKay, the novel explores a different romantic dynamic whilst expanding the series' witchy world and its magical rules, demonstrating that Sterling can sustain the series' charm across different protagonists.

Sterling's writing under the Erin Sterling name is characterized by witchy protagonists, small-town Southern settings, humor and warmth balanced with genuine romantic tension, cosy paranormal atmosphere, accessible prose, reunited lovers or enemies-to-lovers dynamics, magical mishaps creating plot complications, community and found family elements, and comfort reading appeal.

Common themes include magic as metaphor for emotion, small communities where history follows you, first love's lasting impact, witchy heritage and responsibility, finding home in unexpected places, and humor as connection rather than deflection.

Sterling's prose under this pen name is notably lighter and more comedic than some of Hawkins's other work, prioritizing the cosy and romantic over the dark and dramatic whilst still ensuring the magical elements feel genuinely integrated rather than superficial decoration.

What distinguishes Sterling's Graves Glen series is the warmth - readers feel welcomed into the community, invested in characters beyond the central romance, and eager to return to a setting that feels like somewhere they'd genuinely want to spend time.