When a PhD candidate inherits more grief than she can quantify, an attractive musician—and his mysterious jacket—unravels everything she thought she knew about love, loss, and reality.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Solar Eclipse of the Heart by Kate Robb, which releases on October 6th 2026.
Annalise Harris lives by facts and figures. Raised by her uncle after her mother’s death, she’s always relied on logic to avoid the unexpected. So when her uncle passes away, Annalise is left reeling.
Luckily, she has an escape plan: a PhD program abroad to leave her grief behind. Unluckily, Mackenzie Smith, her new roommate, is not the woman she was expecting but a leather jacket–wearing, wannabe rock star, extremely attractive man. At least they’ll only be sharing space for a few months. Then she’ll be gone.
Except Mackenzie is more than he appears—and so is his jacket. When Annalise slips it on one afternoon, she’s struck by inexplicable visions that defy every law of logic. As Annalise scrambles to explain the impossible, she and Mackenzie grow closer.
There’s no rational reason a leather jacket should unlock visions—or for Annalise to fall in love just as she’s preparing to leave. But for the first time since losing her uncle, she feels something she thought was gone for good: happiness.
But can she trust it? And can she follow her heart—even if it means letting go of sense?
EXCERPT
This deleted scene fits right in between Chapters 25 and 26 of SOLAR ECLIPSE of the HEART. It was one of my favourites to write, and it pained me a little to cut it. Hope you enjoy!
The rules of the snow sculpture contest are simple: you have ten minutes. No sabotaging other sculptures. Props are not only allowed, they are also encouraged. Everyone votes for the winner. If there is a tie, the winner is decided by a Battle Royale. I’m not sure what that means. I’m not sure what any of it means or if they are serious about any of it until Clive declares, “Go,” and the three brothers run in opposite directions.
Mackenzie picks up a chunk of ice and rolls it across the snow. It immediately starts to grow bigger until he stops mid-roll and yelps.
“I think I might have stabbed myself.” He unzips his jacket. A blue apron, along with the butter knife he stole from the kitchen, falls out. He lifts his shirt, revealing no evidence of a wound, then sighs. “Good call on not taking the butcher knife.” He picks up the knife and apron, and tosses them under a bush out of sight.
“I am really going to need you to explain that.” I say, but he offers no further commentary other than pointing at the snowball with a “Keep rolling. I’ll start on the body.”
When seven of our ten minutes are up, we have two large snowballs and little else to show for it.
“Can you help me lift this one?” He points to the smaller of the two.
I grab one side, and we hoist it onto the other ball.
“Can you make one more ball?” he asks. “A small one.”
“Like a head for the snowman that is not a snowman?”
He laughs. “Exactly. I need to grab something from the garage.”
He runs off, and I start on the third ball. It gives me a chance to check out the competition. Both Clive and Aaron have built almost identical snowmen. Aaron seems to be making a rather impressive set of snow boobs for his, and Clive is nowhere to be found.
I see Mackenzie exit the garage just as Clive comes bursting out the front door of the house.
“What the hell, Mac? Did you take Dad’s BBQ apron?”
I instinctively step protectively toward the bush.
Mackenzie laughs, “Be quicker next time.”
Clive gives him the finger just as Aaron yells, “One minute,” and all hell breaks loose.
Aaron pulls a silky red piece of fabric from a black gym bag and frantically begins dressing his sculpture. Mackenzie sprints toward me with something white hanging from his lips.
When he gets close, I make out that it’s a cigarette. “Are you smoking?”
“Grab the head!” He yells, jumping over Arron’s empty gym bag and sliding feet first under the bush. He emerges not a moment later with the apron and knife.
He wraps the apron around the snowman’s body just as I place the head on top, then stabs the knife into the side, making our snowman look dangerous and kind of murdery.
Aaron begins the ten-second countdown as Mackenzie pulls two hockey pucks from his pocket to give the snowman eyes, shoves the bottom part of a mop onto the top of the head, takes the unlit cigarette from his lips and stabs it into the snowman’s head where his mouth should be.
“Time!” Aaron calls.
I’m sweating and breathing hard when I step back, not entirely sure what I’m looking at. The apron. The mop. The cigarette and the knife.
“Is that…Jeremy Allan White?”
Mackenzie claps his hands and then holds them up victoriously.
“The Bear! Exactly.”
“No fucking way,” Clive yells. “You stole my idea.” He steps aside to reveal a snowman, also with a cigarette in its mouth but wearing a red Christmas apron, with a gingerbread man in a hospital bed and the phrase, Did you try icing it?
Aaron claps Clive on the back. “That’s sad, Bro,” but Clive shrugs him off.
“Well, what the hell is yours then?”
Aaron steps aside and holds out his arms. “Only the patron saint of country music.”
The silky fabric I saw earlier is, in fact, a red robe trimmed in feathers. On top of the snowman’s head are a scraggly blond wig and a pink cowboy hat that says “Zoe’s last rodeo” on the front. It could be any country singer, really, but I have a feeling I know who it is.
“Dolly Parton?”
Aaron holds up his hand for a high-five. “I knew I liked you, Annalise.”
Clive folds his arms across his chest. “Where the hell did you get that robe from?”
Aaron shrugs. “Found it in Mom’s closet.”
Clive groans, “I didn’t need to know that. You should be disqualified for telling things I can never unknow.”
“Not in the rules,” Aaron counters. “You’re just sore ‘cause I’m clearly the winner.”
“Not with my vote.” Clive reaches down and palms a handful of snow. He tries to make it look discreet, casually rolling it between his gloved hand and thigh. But I can see Mackenzie and Arron exchange glances.
The winner will not be determined diplomatically by popular vote. I’m not sure that was ever really the plan.
We are all mentally preparing for what was inevitably going to happen: A full-blown battle royale.
Clive strikes first, throwing his snowball at Arron. Aaron, however, clearly anticipates this move and dives behind Dolly. The snowball knocks her hat clean off.
Aaron pops up with a snowball in each hand at a speed which makes me suspect they were ready and waiting. One shoots back at Clive, and the other comes sailing in my direction.
“Hey!” I yell, ducking just in time. “I thought we were good.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” Aaron lowers his arms, then steps toward me like he’s going to hug me, but as I step toward him, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out another snowball.
“Incoming.” Mackenzie scoops me up and tosses me over his shoulder just as the snowball lands where I was standing.
“You’re still my favourite, Annalise,” Aaron calls as Mackenzie ducks behind our snowman and pops me down into a fluffy snowbank.
“Never trust Aaron,” Mackenzie says, collapsing next to me. “Everyone expects the dick-moves from Clive, but it’s Aaron you need to watch out for.”
The snow beneath me feels like a pillow. The clouds from earlier have cleared, and the sky is a bright blue. The air is cold, but my jacket is warm, and the combination sends a euphoric rush through my veins.
I remember telling myself right after Larry died that I’d eventually start feeling better. However, three months later, the pain was still there— maybe even worse—and I wondered if the damage was permanent. Perhaps I reached maximum capacity for heartache, and my brain had forgotten how to produce serotonin. Maybe this was the state I’d live in forever: happiness an emotion I once knew, now nothing more than a theoretical concept.
However, staring up at Mackenzie now, with the crisp winter air in my lungs and the smell of baking gingerbread lingering on my clothes, I am so happy I could cry.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Mackenzie removes his glove and brings the pad of his thumb to my cheek, wiping away a tear as a snowball flies overhead and crashes into the bush behind us.
“Not a single thing,” I tell him. “I’m just having a really good time.”
He leans in, bringing his face close to mine. “God, I love you,” he says.
My entire body goes rigid because that was a big word, and I’m not sure he meant to throw it out there like that. Now it hangs between us, as if it’s waiting for its match. Its reciprocal: I love you too.
“It’s okay,” he says, brushing frozen bangs from my forehead. “You don’t have to say it. I sprung that on you. It was the right moment for me, but I know you like time to process.”
I want to say it back. What I feel for him is deep and precious, and unlike anything I have ever felt before. But it’s also something I can’t unsay. It’s a line, once crossed, I can never turn back. If you love, there are only ways forward: love forever or loss.
I reach up and bring his mouth to mine, hoping it tells him what I still haven’t figured out.
But just as the warmth of his lips meets mine, there’s a smash, and I’m sprayed with a cold rain of snow and ice.
Mackenzie jerks back. “What the hell?” His hand finds the back of his head just as two more snowballs hit his back.
“Do you concede?” says a voice I’m pretty sure is Clive’s.
“Fine, yeah.” Mackenzie holds up his hands and turns.
Two snowballs come flying at him from near the trees, hitting him in the chest.
His hands, still in the air, become two middle fingers.
I can hear Aaron and Clive laughing, but the snowballs at least seem to have ceased.
Mackenzie brushes the remaining snow from his coat, reaches for me, and pulls me to my feet, giving me my first full view of the carnage from the battle royal. The pristine white blanket of snow is gone. It’s now marred with footprints, body prints, and a smattering of red feathers. Poor Dolly has lost her hat and left boob. Jeremy Allen has no eyes or hair, and the other Jeremy Allen has lost his head completely.
“That was a dick move, Aaron,” Mackenzie says, rubbing the back of his head. Aaron doesn’t answer because he is pelting Clive with snowballs. Clive runs around the corner of the garage and then returns, holding a shovel, which he uses to hit back the snowballs..
“Are they always like that?” I ask Mackenzie, already suspecting I know the answer.
Mackenzie points at the roof of the garage. “If Gillian were home, she’d be up there plotting to bury both of them in an avalanche.”
I remember his mom’s earlier comment about the cookie. “And where would you be?”
He throws an arm around my shoulder and pulls me close. “It only ends when one of them bleeds or breaks something. I learned long ago it’s in my best interest to stay out of it.”
Now I see it: the way he is with his brothers, why he was so hesitant with Zee, Mackenzie the Peacemaker.
“You’re looking at me funny,” he says, bopping me on the nose with his snowy glove.
“You just caught me in mid-thought, that’s all.” I press up on my toes to land a kiss on his cheek.
He turns his head and replies to my kiss with one of his own. “Hope it was a good one.”
It was more than good.
I wrap my arms around his neck and finish that kiss from the snow. Telling him without saying a word that with every new thing I learn about him, he is undoing me, one perfect detail at a time.
