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The Lies We Need
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 29 2025
Pages: 358
Weight: 1.05
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The Lies We Need by Valentina Kulieva is a powerful, character-driven novel about truth, deception, and the fragile architecture of human connection.
Set in the layered streets of Philadelphia - from quiet cafés and ivy-lined university halls to rusted fire escapes and riverbank bridges - this story follows two strangers, Selia Miller and Jake Lawson, whose lives collide by accident and unravel by choice.
Selia is a psychology professor who studies deception for a living. For her, lies are not just academic curiosities but scars etched into her personal history. Jake is an architect who restores old buildings - a man who knows how to keep walls standing, but not always how to keep his own upright. When their paths cross one morning over two cups of coffee - black, no sugar - a fragile connection begins, one that forces both of them to confront what they hide, what they reveal, and what they are willing to risk in order to be believed.
As their story unfolds, Selia and Jake navigate the lies that sustain relationships as much as they endanger them: the soft lies told to keep peace, the dangerous ones that protect survival, and the devastating silence that can be its own form of deception. Each chapter peels away another layer of their defenses, revealing the deep costs of honesty and the unbearable weight of omission.
This is not a simple love story. It is a meditation on trust, vulnerability, and the brutal paradox of intimacy - that sometimes the person we want most is the one who forces us to confront the truths we've spent years avoiding.
Rich in atmosphere and psychological depth, The Lies We Need captures the rhythms of a city waking, the weight of memories never spoken, and the raw electricity of two people daring to meet without masks. It asks questions that linger long after the last page:
Do we lie to protect, or to possess?
Can love survive without deception?
And what happens when silence speaks louder than words?
A haunting, lyrical exploration of the human need for both truth and illusion, this novel is perfect for readers who love emotionally layered contemporary fiction with literary sensibility - stories like Normal People by Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends, or The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo.
If you've ever whispered a lie to hold on to someone, or felt the sting of realizing the truth was never enough - The Lies We Need will stay with you, long after the final page.
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