Love, Longing, And The Spaces Between: A Preview Of Somewhere Between Us

Every once in a while, a story comes along that doesn’t just entertain. It lingers, it questions, and it dares you to look at your own heart differently. That’s what Somewhere Between Us aims to do. 

Set for release on April 13, 2026, this book is more than just another novel. It’s an exploration of what it means to live in the delicate tension between desire and distance, hope and hesitation, connection and silence. 

It brings together hope and pain, romance and the longing to be something more to someone. Somewhere Between Us is meant to show you how healing from sexual assault while trying to fall in love can be complicated, heartbreaking, and life-changing all at once. 

THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE STORY

This is more than just a story that is being brought to life. This is my story, being brought to life. It gives a voice to the pain and explores falling in love after trauma. 

Every book begins with a spark. For Somewhere Between Us, that spark grew from the spaces most of us know but rarely name. The in-betweens of relationships, including the ones that we have with ourselves, the moments when words remain unsaid, and the ache of both wanting and waiting. 

While pieces of my lived experience inform the emotional truth, some of the story unfolds through imagination, weaving together universal threads of longing into something uniquely its own. Writing Somewhere Between Us as fiction gave me a kind of permission I didn’t know I needed. 

When we write our lives directly, there can be a pressure to get it right, to tell the story as it happened, to stay loyal to the details, to hide some of the details because they aren’t always pretty or magical. But fiction loosens that grip. It allowed me to step back, to reshape moments, and to give myself room to explore the story that real life never allowed.

In many ways, fiction became a safe container. Through my characters, I could voice feelings I once buried, ask questions I was too afraid to whisper out loud, and examine relationships without the weight of names or faces. It gave me distance while still holding me close. By building a fictional world, I discovered truths about my real one. Truths about the kind of love I longed for and found, the silences I kept, and the way I saw myself in the spaces between.

That’s the gift of storytelling: sometimes imagination becomes the bridge that lets us finally meet ourselves on the other side. Writing this book wasn’t just about telling a story. It was about understanding my own, and in doing so, offering readers a mirror for theirs.

THE EMOTIONAL CORE OF THIS BOOK

At its heart, this book asks readers to sit with complexity. Life is rarely black and white, and neither are our emotions. Love, longing, and the spaces between them don’t arrive neatly packaged. They spill, overlap, and blur the lines we try to draw. Somewhere Between Us leans into that messiness, not to solve it, but to honor it.

Love in its many forms shows up throughout the story. Not only in romance, but also in the quiet loyalty of friendship, in the unglamorous persistence of self-love, and in the fleeting moments where love hides in gestures so small we almost miss them. This book invites readers to see love not as a single grand gesture, but as a thousand tiny echoes that shape who we are.

Longing as both ache and hope is another piece to this story. Longing can feel like a sharp edge, an emptiness we can’t quite touch, but it can also be a compass pointing us toward possibility. Desire, even when unfulfilled, tells us something about who we are and what we dream of. In that way, longing is both pain and promise.

And then there are the spaces between. Those pauses we often rush through, the silences that feel unbearable, the waiting rooms of life where nothing seems to move but everything quietly changes. 

Transformation doesn’t always happen in the chaos; sometimes it happens in the stillness. In the moments when pain consumes us and we don’t know how we are going to move on. By dwelling in those spaces, the story asks readers to reflect on their own moments of in-betweenness and what they might reveal.

MEET THE MAIN CHARACTERS OF SOMEWHERE BETWEEN US

The characters in Somewhere Between Us are not perfect. They are beautifully flawed, achingly human, and deeply real. Each of them carries a piece of the story’s emotional weight, reminding us that connection is shaped as much by our imperfections as by our strengths.

At the heart of the novel is Faye, the protagonist. Faye is a sexual assault survivor, and the book traces the year and a half after her assault as she struggles to piece herself back together. She is raw, vulnerable, and at times painfully self-critical. Her journey isn’t neat or linear. It’s jagged, filled with moments of resilience and moments of collapse. Through Faye, the story explores what it means to try to “heal” yourself when the world feels broken and when shame whispers that you’re unworthy of love.

Then comes Josh, the other central character. Josh lives thousands of miles away, yet distance doesn’t stop their connection. What begins as something small grows into a love that challenges both of them. For Faye, letting Josh in means confronting her deepest fears about intimacy, trust, and worth. For Josh, loving Faye requires patience, gentleness, and a willingness to stand in the spaces she keeps trying to close off. Their relationship unfolds with tenderness and tension, always circling the question: how do you fall in love when you can barely stand yourself?

The structure of the book mirrors this complexity. It moves between flashbacks of Faye’s life before Josh and the evolving relationship they build together. This back-and-forth allows readers to see how her past shadows her present, and how love, while not a cure, can become a catalyst for transformation. A way of getting permission from someone else that you are worthy of love, even when you don’t feel like you are.

Together, Faye and Josh embody the central tension of the novel: the push and pull between closeness and distance, between self-hatred and acceptance, between fear and the risk of letting love in. Their story is both deeply personal and universally recognizable, a reminder that even in our most fractured states, connection is still possible.

A PREVIEW INTO SOMEWHERE BETWEEN US

Without giving away too much, Somewhere Between Us is a story that doesn’t shy away from asking bold questions. What happens when we try to heal ourselves with destructive behaviors? What truths emerge in silence, when words fall away and only feeling remains? And how does love transform when it arrives in ways we never expected, in places we never thought to look?

These questions sit at the heart of the novel, making it not just a story, but an invitation for readers to pause and reflect on their own in-betweens. Because the truth is, every one of us has lived in those spaces. Waiting for a call that might change everything, standing on the edge of a decision, or holding love at arm’s length out of fear of being hurt. 

The emotions running through this book are universal, though expressed through deeply personal characters and moments. That balance, the intimacy of one woman’s story woven with feelings we all recognize, makes the novel both relatable and profoundly moving.

And while the story asks you to sit with complexity, it also offers hope. It reminds us that silence can carry meaning, that longing can be a compass, and that even fractured hearts can find new rhythms. Here is a small paragraph from my book, Somewhere Between Us,

"The nightmare jolts me awake. My lungs heave, my skin damp with sweat. The room around me is unfamiliar in the haze of sleep, too dark, too quiet. For a brief, disorienting moment, I don’t know where I am.

The phantom weight of hands lingers on my skin, fingers pressing where they shouldn’t be, the smell of beer and sweat suffocating me. My stomach knots, bile rising to my throat."

The book will be released on April 13, 2026, but the journey begins long before then. In the months leading up to publication, I’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses, reflections from the writing process, and small sneak peeks into the world of Faye and Josh. Readers who want to be part of this unfolding story will have many chances to connect, reflect, and walk alongside me as the release date draws closer.

So, mark your calendars. This isn’t just a book. It’s a shared experience, a conversation about love, longing, and the spaces between. If the themes of love, longing, and the spaces between resonate with you, I invite you to walk this journey with me. Sign up for my newsletter, follow along on the blog, and keep an eye out for preorder announcements. Together, let’s create a community around the conversations this book was meant to spark.