She grew up in the small town of Sewell, in southern New Jersey, where she still lives today. Her mother was an English teacher who gave it up and worked at home as a seamstress to raise her three daughters, while her father worked for the US government. She has two younger sisters, which made the house busy and noisy for most of her childhood. The arts run in her family. After leaving college, Christine had several jobs. She worked in a pasta factory, a health club, and a five star hotel spa before deciding to go back to school. She enrolled part-time at Philadelphia Community College, where she took core classes for two years before transferring to Temple University.

She met her husband, John, in 1998. He is a volunteer fireman. She graduated Cum Laude from Temple in May of 2000 with a Bachelor of Science from the College of Education. Christine and John married, in a Renaissance themed wedding, in October of 2000. Their son was born in 2002. She often hides her identity as author in the guised of a mild-mannered elementary and middle school substitute teacher, a job that allows her to connect with and understand her readers.