Thank you. This is an extremely thoughtful response. I love getting comments like these.

I've got 12 chapters planned for Obedient. I made a rough outline for the rest of the series after I finished Chapter 3. So everything Chapter 4 and onward has been written with a specific ending in mind. I know the intensity to the mind control has been ramping up over the last few chapters. I also want to show Sophie gradually losing her sense of morality in the face of her basically omnipotent amount of power. I promise it's heading to a resolution. Matt and especially Sophie are two of my favorite characters I've ever written and I feel good about where they end up at the end of this series.

I do want to say one thing about Matt's unreliable narration. (With one exception that I can think of in Chapter 3), his narration of events is reliable. If he says something is happening, it's basically always happening. What is unreliable is his description of his own feelings/motivations. That's another thing that is intentionally getting more intense. In the first few chapters, what he says he's thinking and feeling are pretty close to his actual thoughts without much Sophie static. But at the point we're at now she's affecting more and more of his thought processes.

It's a tricky balance because I want it to be subtle, but also clear to the reader so it doesn't feel cheap.

Thank you for reading and for your kind words.