Goldfinch is the sixth and final installment in Raven Kennedy’s Plated Prisoner series, a dark fantasy romance that reimagines the myth of King Midas. Kennedy self-published the first novel, Gild, in 2020, and the series gained significant momentum through social media, particularly TikTok's “BookTok” community. Its popularity led to a deal with Bloom Books, an imprint of Sourcebooks, and the series has since become an international bestseller with over three million copies sold worldwide.

The six novels follow a continuous arc around Auren’s evolving identity. Gild, Glint, and Gleam establish her as a captive of King Midas in the frozen kingdom of Highbell, exploring manipulation, complicity, and self-worth. As the series progresses, Auren’s world expands when she encounters Commander Rip, questions her loyalty to Midas, and discovers her fae heritage and ties to the realm of Annwyn. Glow and Gold deepen these revelations while escalating the romantic and political stakes across multiple kingdoms. Goldfinch resolves these threads by bringing Auren into her full power across both the Orean and fae worlds. Kennedy frames the series around binary oppositions in her author's letter, describing Auren’s journey as a constant negotiation between light and dark, trauma and healing, powerlessness and strength. The finale honors this framework by pairing Auren’s personal reclamation with a sprawling war narrative.

Kennedy’s path to becoming an international bestselling author via this series highlights both the opportunities and the precariousness of the modern digital publishing landscape. She began her career as an independent author, utilizing platforms like Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited (KU). KU is a subscription service that allows readers to access a large catalog of e-books, and it pays authors based on the number of pages read. To participate, authors must grant Amazon exclusivity, meaning their e-books cannot be sold on other platforms. This model was instrumental in helping Kennedy build an audience for The Plated Prisoner series. However, in early 2022, the series gained such popularity that it became a major target for digital piracy. Pirated copies began appearing on other websites, which violated KU’s exclusivity clause. In response, Amazon’s automated bots removed some books in the series from the platform, cutting off Kennedy’s primary source of income and access to her readers without warning. This incident, and similar incidents involving other popular indie authors, sparked outrage among readers and highlighted authors’ vulnerability to algorithmic decisions and the pervasive issue of digital piracy. Kennedy’s eventual move to the traditional publisher Sourcebooks for the print editions reflects a common trajectory for successful indie authors seeking the stability, marketing power, and broader distribution that a major publishing house can provide.