The Quiet Side of Love is a powerful, emotional YA novel that explores grief, healing, and unexpected connection — all through the lens of quiet moments, visual storytelling, and the unspoken language of love.

At its heart is Maya, a sixteen-year-old girl grappling with the crushing loss of her older brother, Josh — a vibrant artist whose absence has left her world colorless. Her grief is intimate, isolating, and suffocating… until she meets Luca, a Deaf boy whose presence shifts everything.

Luca doesn’t speak with words, but his world is rich with expression, honesty, and stillness — something Maya finds herself drawn to. As their connection deepens, Maya learns to listen in new ways — not just to Luca, but to herself, to silence, and to the emotions she’s buried deep inside.

Photography becomes her bridge to healing. Luca becomes her safe place. And in the quiet between them, something tender, truthful, and transformative blooms.

The Quiet Side of Love is for readers who believe that:

• Grief isn’t linear
  
  

• Love can be felt before it's spoken
  
  

• And silence, when shared, can be the loudest kind of connection
  
  

It’s a story about learning to live again — one photograph, one moment, one heartbeat at a time.

MAYBE MAKING THIS A SERIES 

Seventeen-year-old Lena Harper had everything planned for the perfect summer—road trips, beach days, and a deep dive into a carefree life before senior year. But her world flips when she learns that her mother’s cancer has returned, and this time, the prognosis isn’t promising. Instead of the summer of her dreams, Lena finds herself spending her days at the hospital, torn between caring for her mom and the life she’s left behind.

Enter Luke Everly, a boy she once knew from her childhood summers. Luke is everything Lena used to love—free-spirited, with a knack for making everything seem possible. But this summer is different for him too. After a tragic accident that left him with chronic pain and scarred for life, Luke is struggling with his own demons, battling the remnants of guilt and physical limitations.

When the two are unexpectedly thrust together during a local summer festival, they discover that their shared sense of loss and uncertainty binds them. As they spend long nights talking under the stars, Lena finds herself drawn to Luke, who reminds her of the world outside her mother’s illness. Luke finds solace in Lena's quiet strength and vulnerability. Despite their individual struggles, they form a connection that feels as fleeting and beautiful as the summer itself.

But both are haunted by the fear of the inevitable. For Lena, it's the uncertain future of her mother’s health and whether she will ever be able to let go of the person who’s always been her anchor. For Luke, it's the guilt of surviving the accident while others didn’t, and the growing fear that his physical limitations will always overshadow his future.

As the summer heats up and the days grow shorter, they must confront their darkest fears—the possibility of loss, the fragility of life, and the kind of love that changes everything. In the end, Blue Skies, Broken Hearts is about learning to live fully in the face of heartache and accepting that some things, like love and hope, are worth fighting for even when the future is uncertain.

Seventeen-year-old Tessa Lane has lived her entire life on the edge. Born with a congenital heart defect, she’s been in and out of hospitals for as long as she can remember. Her world is ruled by routines, restrictions, and a looming heart transplant list that might be her only shot at surviving into adulthood.

Then she meets Caleb Reed, a charming and fiercely independent boy with a similar condition—and a secret. Unlike Tessa, Caleb has chosen to live fully without the burden of constant medical intervention. He knows his time may be shorter, but he refuses to let fear dictate his life. He hikes. He drives fast. He doesn’t talk about the what-ifs.

Thrown together during a support group neither of them wanted to attend, Tessa and Caleb form an unlikely bond. He pushes her to take risks. She challenges him to reconsider the future. Together, they explore the delicate line between surviving and living—falling in love in the space between.

But as Tessa’s condition worsens and Caleb begins to face the limits of his choices, the future they dream of starts to slip away. With their hearts literally and metaphorically failing them, they must decide: is loving someone with half a heart still worth giving all of yours?

Eighteen-year-old Elara Voss has always believed in signs. Diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder that causes unpredictable blackouts and hallucinations, she finds comfort in stars, fate, and the idea that the universe has a plan for her—even if that plan is tragically short.

Then she meets Orion Blake.

Quiet, brilliant, and harboring a past he doesn’t speak of, Orion has his own clock ticking. He’s just been accepted into a prestigious astrophysics program, but he’s hiding a degenerative heart condition that could change everything. Unlike Elara, he doesn't believe in fate—only science, logic, and what he can see through a telescope.

Their worlds quite literally collide when a school stargazing event brings them together on the night of a rare cosmic event—a celestial convergence that hasn’t occurred in centuries. When they touch for the first time, both experience an inexplicable flash of memory—memories that aren’t theirs.

From that night forward, every time they hold hands, they see pieces of each other’s lives they haven’t yet lived. Moments of joy, heartbreak, illness, and love. A possible future neither of them knows if they’ll live long enough to reach.

As Elara and Orion fall for each other, they try to piece together the visions of what might be—faced with the harsh truth that one of them might not make it. Torn between chasing fate and fighting reality, they must decide: are the stars showing them what will be… or what could be, if they’re brave enough to reach for it?