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Just Before Daybreak: A Life Lived Between Yesterday and Tomorrow
From Deanna Lorea — Los Angeles-based writer, speaker, and faith community builder (@dahter_ on Instagram and TikTok), and author of Unraveled and The Lost Art of Being Hidden, whose books have become trusted companions for those navigating the hardest threshold seasons of their lives. Just Before Daybreak is her third book — and the most direct reckoning yet with what that undoing actually feels like from the inside.
These moments are purely transitions in your story. But they just might kill you.
You're learning to live between what was and what will be. Not the before. Not the after. The terrible, sacred, disorienting space between — where the thing you were certain of has ended without warning, where the lies you've believed for years are finally dying, and where the life ahead hasn't yet become visible. This is the in-between. And most books don't know what to do with it.
Just Before Daybreak does. In the voice she has developed across three books — prophetic, intimate, literary prose that feels less like reading and more like being heard — Lorea writes for the person in the middle of a transition that is rearranging a relationship, a calling, an identity, a faith. She writes with the conviction that the darkness just before daybreak is not the absence of God but the presence of something being made new. The title is not metaphor. It is a very specific hour — the one where everything is still dark, but morning is coming.
The full subtitle tells you exactly what this book is and isn' A Life Lived Between Yesterday and Tomorrow. Not how to escape the in-between. Not a map to the other side. A companion for the living of it.
Perfect
Readers of Unraveled and Undignified who have followed Lorea's journey through The Undoing series and are ready for this next reckoning with what transformation actually costsWomen in a season of major life transition — a calling that hasn't arrived yet, a relationship that ended, a version of themselves that is dying to make room for something new — who need company in the waiting rather than instructions for escaping itFollowers of @dahter_ on Instagram or TikTok who know Lorea's voice from her online community and want her deepest, most sustained work in a single volumeAnyone in the particular darkness of "just before daybreak" — where the old chapter is clearly over but the new one hasn't shown its face — who needs a writer who has been there and returned with language for it
These moments are purely transitions in your story. But they just might kill you.
You're learning to live between what was and what will be. Not the before. Not the after. The terrible, sacred, disorienting space between — where the thing you were certain of has ended without warning, where the lies you've believed for years are finally dying, and where the life ahead hasn't yet become visible. This is the in-between. And most books don't know what to do with it.
Just Before Daybreak does. In the voice she has developed across three books — prophetic, intimate, literary prose that feels less like reading and more like being heard — Lorea writes for the person in the middle of a transition that is rearranging a relationship, a calling, an identity, a faith. She writes with the conviction that the darkness just before daybreak is not the absence of God but the presence of something being made new. The title is not metaphor. It is a very specific hour — the one where everything is still dark, but morning is coming.
The full subtitle tells you exactly what this book is and isn' A Life Lived Between Yesterday and Tomorrow. Not how to escape the in-between. Not a map to the other side. A companion for the living of it.
Perfect
Readers of Unraveled and Undignified who have followed Lorea's journey through The Undoing series and are ready for this next reckoning with what transformation actually costsWomen in a season of major life transition — a calling that hasn't arrived yet, a relationship that ended, a version of themselves that is dying to make room for something new — who need company in the waiting rather than instructions for escaping itFollowers of @dahter_ on Instagram or TikTok who know Lorea's voice from her online community and want her deepest, most sustained work in a single volumeAnyone in the particular darkness of "just before daybreak" — where the old chapter is clearly over but the new one hasn't shown its face — who needs a writer who has been there and returned with language for it
155 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 20, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 18, 2026
a great read for those looking to give themselves more grace
Just went through a large transition that caused grief and now I’m in the space in between where joy and being more rooted in Christ is happening. Highly recommend for those who need to be more tender with themselves because all parts of the journey won’t be sorrowful. We need only to receive.
Just went through a large transition that caused grief and now I’m in the space in between where joy and being more rooted in Christ is happening. Highly recommend for those who need to be more tender with themselves because all parts of the journey won’t be sorrowful. We need only to receive.
January 15, 2026
Not terrible, but basically a collection of the author’s journal entries as she went through a hard time in her life. I felt like this was something she needed to write but I’m not sure if it’s something I necessarily needed to read. I’m not exactly sure what I was supposed to take away from it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews