The accident took his voice, but she heard him anyway.

Former rockstar Gabe Whitlock has been hidden away in a long-term care facility ever since an on-stage accident stole his music, his movement, and even his voice. No one's thought about him in years.

Anna Lin is still raw from losing her mother and battling the panic attacks that derailed her college career. Living with her father again feels like a step backward—until he gets her a job as the activities coordinator at Rosehaven.

What she doesn't expect is to find Gabe Whitlock, former frontman and guitarist of Pressure Front, quietly wasting away in a nursing home in Western Massachusetts.

Drawn together by music and art, Anna and Gabe forge an unlikely bond. But when Gabe's sister schemes to seize control of his estate, Anna and a ragtag band of residents push back.

Their defiance threatens to cost Anna the fragile new life she's building—and Gabe the last shreds of independence he has left.

Waiting to Break is an emotionally powerful, deeply romantic journey about finding your voice after losing everything, the dignity of choosing who you love, and the courage it takes to find your own path in life.

For fans of soulful, emotionally charged romance novels and authors like Jojo Moyes, Jodi Picoult, and Nicholas Sparks.

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This book features the found family trope with lots of fun side characters helping our main characters get to their HEA, a very slow burn, later-in-life, age gap relationship.
There are themes of healing from loss of a parent and spouse, as well as explorations of what love, hope, desire, and independence look like at the end of life.

It has an incomplete quadriplegic hero with a severe form of TBI who uses a power wheelchair and an AAC speaking device. It has a heroine with an anxiety disorder.

Book Club Discussion Guide available at RuthMadisonBooks.com

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Content Includes: institutional neglect, medical trauma, grief, panic attacks/anxiety, power dynamics in caregiving, public debate about "right to die," false accusations, elder death, loss of a parent
Spice Level is a few scenes of open-door intimacy.