Amanda Lynn Petrin Books in Order

If you want the main Giftedverse story first: Prophecy → Destiny → Legacy
If you prefer a mystery-forward entry point: First Life → Second Chance
If you want the emotional standalone: Shards of Glass
If you like the companion reads and extra backstory: Annabelle → Etta → For Hannah → Tristan

Amanda Lynn Petrin grew up on Montreal's South Shore in a big, supportive family, and she has described herself as a storyteller for as long as she can remember. Long before publication, she was already building characters and living inside their lives. That early mix of imagination and close attention to people still shows up in her fiction.

Story came first.

Acting was part of that story too. Petrin worked in commercials as a small child, did local stage productions once she was in school, and later spent years chasing an acting career. At McGill University, she took a double major in Psychology and History, a choice she has said was meant to help her write more interesting characters across different time periods. It sounds practical and a little nerdy, which is probably the point.

She was learning how people work, onstage and off.

After university, Petrin kept acting and in 2017 moved to Toronto, hoping for more opportunities. She later said that move taught her something useful: sometimes you have to create the work you want instead of waiting for it. She has written, produced, and appeared in short films, and eventually gave that same energy to books. In August 2019, after years of hesitation and revision, she published her first novel, Shards of Glass.

Shards of Glass is not a gentle debut. It follows fifteen-year-old Rachel Glass after an act of school violence shatters her life and sends her across the country to live with the father who left. Petrin has written that she started imagining Rachel years earlier, and the book carries that long buildup. Readers who find her through this novel usually respond to the raw emotion, the family tension, and the way she stays focused on what trauma does to ordinary people.

From there she turned fully toward the paranormal world she now calls the Giftedverse. Prophecy, Destiny, and Legacy follow Lucy Owens into a family history shaped by prophecy, hidden enemies, and people called Gifteds, humans with supernatural abilities who do not stay dead until their purpose is complete. Later, First Life and Second Chance widen that same universe through Alison Carmichael, whose strange gift pulls her into cold cases, dangerous ancestry, and a growing romance with Tristan Davis. Shorter works like Annabelle and Etta add older layers to that world.

Across those books, a few things keep returning. Petrin likes young women who are pushed into impossible situations and still keep moving. She likes family secrets, history that refuses to stay buried, and supernatural rules that hit hardest at the personal level. Even when the setup is magical, the pull is usually emotional: grief, guilt, loyalty, first love, and the question of who gets to choose the shape of a life.

She still keeps a foot in acting while building her writing career, and she has also been unusually open about the practical side of self-publishing. She has shared what it cost her to bring early books into the world, along with lessons about editing, formatting, covers, and launch plans. In recent years she has met readers at Montreal Comic Con and talked about expanding her catalog in new formats and new languages. That openness fits the rest of her work. The books may deal in secrets, but Petrin herself tends to be refreshingly direct.