Hollow Sound: A Story of Everything We Built and Everything She Burned (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798181075238)

Some cracks don't show until the whole thing is under tension. And some love stories are built perfectly... right on top of a fault line.

Bryce Hadley is a man who understands how to build things to last. As a dedicated luthier, he spends his days in a sunlit workshop, listening to the invisible tensions in raw wood, crafting flawless stringed instruments. He is quiet, grounded, and intensely devoted to his wife, Maren-a brilliant, ambitious marine biologist whose boundless energy has always perfectly balanced his deliberate stillness.

Their love story began in the Portland rain, forged through years of freezing studio apartments, financial struggle, and the devastating loss of Bryce's father. They emerged stronger, securing a mortgage, a deep unspoken intimacy, and a love that felt as permanent as the foundation of their home.

For five grueling years, they have fought through the labyrinthine process of international adoption. When they are finally matched with a three-year-old girl from Bogotá named Lucia, Bryce pours his entire soul into hand-carving a beautiful cherry wood crib for her nursery. They are weeks away from finalizing custody and bringing their daughter home.

Then Maren receives a career-defining promotion that sends her to a series of international symposiums in Copenhagen.

She returns subtly but fundamentally altered. Her phone becomes guarded. Her touches grow cold. She whispers in halting Danish in the dead of night. Conditioned by blind devotion and the terrifying threat of losing their adoption, Bryce blames the stress, desperately trying to hold their fracturing life together.

Until the truth arrives on a corrupted backup hard drive.

What Bryce discovers is an encrypted archive of photographs and messages that don't just reveal a physical affair with a Danish marine biologist-they represent the complete assassination of Bryce's identity. In an instant, the quiet man who has spent his life making beautiful things must navigate an impossible, agonizing calculus: endure the betrayal in silent purgatory to save their innocent adopted daughter, or burn down the toxic remnants of his marriage to save his own soul.

Hollow Sound is a staggering, emotionally devastating contemporary romance and psychological drama about the anatomy of betrayal, the silent weight of infidelity, and the heartbreaking courage it takes to shatter an illusion.

Perfect for readers who crave:

• Deep emotional angst and tear-jerker fiction

• Marriage in crisis and complex relationship dynamics

• Raw, sensual romance paired with devastating heartbreak

• Flawed, beautifully written characters facing impossible choices

• A gripping story of betrayal, survival, and starting over