She Didn't Choose Between Love and Her Dreams. She Refused To.

I want to tell you something about Cerys Duncan before you meet her.

She's not a woman in crisis. She's not broken, exactly—just... compressed. Like someone who's spent years fitting herself into spaces that were never quite the right shape, who learned early that being agreeable was safer than being herself, and who got so good at performing "practical" that she forgot practical and afraid aren't the same thing.

She's also kind of remarkable. Quietly, stubbornly, wonderfully remarkable.

When I started writing Saltwater Between Us, I kept running into a version of this story that felt wrong. The kind where the woman who chases adventure gets to the end and realizes what she really wanted was to stay. Where love is the thing that saves her from her own restlessness. Where the man is the destination.

I couldn't write that story. (I tried. My document still has the graveyard to prove it.)

Because here's the thing—I've read that story. You've read that story. And it's lovely, really. But it never fully answered the question I kept asking: What if she could have both? What if she refused to let love be a reason to stop?

Cerys is 27 and she's just traded her safe, predictable life for a solo sailing adventure in French Polynesia. That's already wild. That's already a whole character arc for most books. But she's not out there running from something—she's sailing toward herself. Toward the version of her life that Nana Mae, her grandmother, always swore was waiting if she'd just stop asking permission for it.

She's a Seeker. That's her archetype, and I mean it in the most alive, most hopeful sense of the word.

And then she meets Liam.

And the story gets complicated. (The good kind of complicated—the kind that keeps you up past midnight reading "just one more chapter.")

Here's what I knew going in: I didn't want Cerys to have to choose. That felt like a false premise. The real question—the juicier, harder, more interesting question—is what does love look like when it doesn't ask you to shrink? What happens when the man who falls for you also falls for who you're becoming? What happens when he has to figure out his own freedom in order to meet you in yours?

That's the story I wrote.

I'm so excited for you to meet her. She's the kind of woman who names inanimate objects, texts her mom regularly but has finally stopped asking for permission, and still wakes up some mornings surprised that this is her actual life.

She's also going to make you want to book a sailing trip. I am not responsible for any flights you purchase.

Saltwater Between Us releases April 21, 2026. Sign up to receive The Conservatory Letters to know when Pre-orders go live.

More soon. The water is warm, I promise.

Until next time,

— Jade