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What the Tide Took: A Novel of Love, Loss, and the Shore That Remains
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Mar 28 2026
Pages: 266
Weight: 0.79
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
How do you survive loving someone whose mind became a storm you could never outrun?
Twenty-four-year-old freelance illustrator Margot Walsh thought she had found her safe harbor. When she meets brilliant photographer Garrett Hollis at a rain-soaked Portland art fair, his raw vulnerability and storm-coast beauty pull her in like a riptide. She promises to be his anchor, completely unaware that she is stepping onto a battlefield without any armor.
As Garrett's mental health deteriorates, spiraling into deep depression and emotional volatility, Margot becomes his sole lifeline. She abandons her thriving art career, alienates her friends, and slowly erases her own identity to keep him breathing. But when she discovers a devastating betrayal that proves her absolute devotion was being manipulated, Margot's carefully constructed cage of guilt shatters. She makes the terrifying choice to pack her bags and leave to save her own life.
Weeks later, a 3:47 a.m. phone call delivers the ultimate nightmare: Garrett has taken his own life. Worse, his suicide note explicitly blames Margot's departure for his death.
Exiled by his friends, crushed by public shame, and haunted by a suffocating guilt, Margot flees to her childhood home on the jagged Oregon coast. There, amidst the crashing waves, the haunting history of local lighthouse keepers, and the quiet presence of a stranger who demands absolutely nothing of her, she must face the darkest parts of her trauma.
What the Tide Took is a breathtaking, fiercely emotional journey of healing from toxic relationships, surviving narcissistic abuse, and finding yourself after profound grief. Heartbreaking and triumphant, this contemporary women's fiction novel explores the terrifying cost of sacrificing your own oxygen to save a drowning man-and the quiet, resilient power required to finally stand on your own shore.
Perfect for readers of deeply moving, psychological, and emotional literary fiction.
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