Shards of You and Me

I started writing Shards of You and Me back in 2020 but ended up stopping ten thousand words in. I wasn’t ready. There was too much me in those initial words, and I have zero interest in writing memoir. So I’ve spent the past two years getting to know the characters in my head so that I can tell their story instead of mine. Only when I could remove myself from it entirely did I try again.

Shards of You and Me is a contemporary standalone forbidden romance with a good dose of family drama. While the love story between Annie and Hunter is the main plot, the family relationships are a very close second.

My leading lady is Annie Wilson, and she’s a Jehovah’s Witness. This might seem like a strange or ballsy choice for a heroine, but as I was raised within the organisation, I feel more than qualified to write from her point of view.

Obviously there are some personal aspects to this story. I left the religion at around the same age that Annie is when she starts to have doubts about her beliefs. Leaving the organisation means leaving people behind, and I know something about that too. Luckily for Annie, she navigates this time in her life with far more grace than I did. The best part about being a writer is that you get to rewrite history. You can take parts of your own life and imagine better outcomes for your characters.

There’s magic in that.

The match I chose for Annie is another bold choice. It would have been so easy to give her the nice guy. Someone stable. Someone whole. She absolutely deserves those things. Instead, I gave her Hunter Reed. Why? Because all of his broken pieces fit perfectly with hers.

Hunter’s not a bad person, he’s just got his own stuff going on. Amid the red flags, you’ll find some great qualities that become more visible as the story progresses. He actually reminds me a bit of Cora from the Companion series. He self-sabotages in the same way. You’ll be angry at him and angry with him, but hopefully you’ll see that he’s capable of all kinds of love.

Also, if you know nothing about the beliefs and practises of Jehovah’s Witnesses, you might find the religious component of the story intriguing—or perhaps disturbing. The point isn’t to educate or expose. I simply want to offer readers a unique perspective that (to my knowledge) has never been done within the romance genre before.

Of course, I can sit here stating my intentions until I’m blue in the face, but the second I hit publish, the story no longer belongs to me. It then belongs to the reader. It’s theirs to love, hate, judge, and interpret as they please. And if I’m being honest, that’s a little terrifying.

Also, a quick side note for my readers who prefer their romance on the sweeter side: this story is NOT fade to black. The intimate scenes are important to the story and offer a lot of insight into the state of Annie and Hunter’s relationship at that time. They’re not graphic or long, and there’s only a few of them, but they are in there.

And it’s probably worth mentioning that there’s more bad language in this story than I would normally include. It’s written in the first-person POV, and Hunter has a bit of a potty-mouth, so expect a few colourful phrases.

I’m not trying to talk you out of reading this one. It’ll be great, I promise. A little different, BUT, still very much a Tanya Bird book.

So if you like forbidden love stories, gritty characters, sky-high angst, second chances, enemies to friends to lovers (I can merge tropes, right?), messy families, and hard-earned happily ever afters, then keep an eye out for this one.

And if you’re sitting there wishing I’d stay in my damn lane, please know I haven’t wandered too far. Kingdom of Chains is up next!

Shards of You and Me should (hopefully) be released July 2022.