The Room We Made Gentle

Love isn't loud. It's the work of gentle. When Fiadh Kelleher returns to the coastal town she once fled, she isn't looking for forgiveness or belonging—just a quiet place to breathe. But the sea has its own rhythm, and the people who still remember her have their own ideas about what home can mean. Across a small Irish harbor, an old workshop light still burns. Inside, Gabriel Devlin has built a life of order and quiet repair—restoring boats, mending nets, and living by the tide. When Fiadh steps back into his orbit, the routine that steadied him begins to shift, thread by fragile thread. What begins as small, practical kindness—a ride to town, a pot of tea, a mended chair—becomes something deeper: an act of rebuilding, both of a house and of the heart. Together, Fiadh and Gabriel learn the language of gentleness—the slow work of forgiveness, patience, and care that can turn a room, a home, or a life into something safe again. The Room We Made Gentle is a luminous story about staying, softness, and the quiet courage to begin again. With the intimacy of a love story and the emotional weight of literary fiction, Laura Carpenter's prose glows with warmth, Irish texture, and unguarded truth. Perfect for readers of The Keeper of Stories, Small Things Like These, Evvie Drake Starts Over, and Lessons in Chemistry, this novel celebrates the grace in everyday repair and the power of choosing gentleness—again and again.