Sunshine is Work

What Heart Unlocked Is Really About

Heart Unlocked comes out July 23rd, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk about what this book is aboutwithout sounding like I’m writing a term paper on my own romance novel.

Nobody wants that. Least of all me.

So here’s the short version: it’s a grumpy/sunshine slow burn. Weary heroine who hands out light to everyone around her. Enormous blunt alien who has never softened a sentence in his life.

Sparks. You know how this goes.

But underneath that, this book is about something I think about a lot: kindness is work.

Sunshine takes effort

Willow’s whole thing — the petition, the café tables, remembering everybody’s name and everybody’s bad day — looks effortless from the outside. That’s the point. It’s supposed to.

But somebody is doing all of that, every single day, and nobody ever asks what it’s costing her. The question I kept circling while I wrote this book was simple: who takes care of the person who takes care of everyone else?

Spoiler: in this book, it’s a seven-foot Formorian with zero social graces. I stand by this choice.

The rule that never existed

Willow has spent nearly a year fighting to let Colony residents wear their own clothes instead of standard-issue gray. Then Reig does the one thing nobody else bothered to do. He reads the bylaws.

There is no rule.

There never was.

I love this beat because it’s true to how real communities work. Sometimes the thing holding everyone back isn’t a villain. It’s a rule nobody wrote, that nobody questioned, that everybody just... accepted.

And sometimes the person who breaks it loose is the one who’s too blunt to accept “that’s just how it is” as an answer.

Being seen

Willow makes everyone feel seen. Nobody has ever really looked at her. That’s the heart of the romance for me — not the first kiss, not the tension (though yes, both, I promise).

It’s the moment somebody looks straight past the smile and asks if she’s actually okay. Being seen is terrifying when you’ve built your whole life around being useful instead.

Willow has to learn that letting somebody care for her doesn’t erase everything she is.

Found family, again, always

If you’ve read Cyborg Unclaimed or Beast Unbound, you know I can’t help myself. The Colony runs on found family — neighbors, coworkers, café regulars, one very stubborn tailor.

The quiet wins in this book matter as much as the big ones, because that’s how repair actually happens.

Together. Slowly. One small stubborn act at a time.

Whether you’re here for the slow burn or the blunt alien or the “oh no, she’s crying and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands” of it all — I hope this one warms you up.

Sometimes the bravest thing a person can do is keep showing up.

And sometimes it’s letting someone show up for you.