Overview

The Architecture of Pain is a hauntingly intimate novella about self-destruction, longing, and the quiet rebuilding of self-worth.
Olivia Darrow, 27, brilliant and emotionally raw, is drawn into an obsessive affair with her mentor—Shanaya Mehra, a charismatic architect whose designs reshape skylines but whose inner world is riddled with shadows. What begins as admiration becomes entanglement, and when Shanaya abandons her with a coldly crafted letter, Olivia’s world collapses—until Dr Evelyn Maxwell, a reserved and uncompromising therapist, steps in.
Through charged therapy sessions, Olivia unpacks the scars of self-harm, the ghosts of desire, and the mechanics of emotional cruelty. As memory and truth blur, she begins to uncover not just the architecture of pain—but the slow and luminous possibility of healing.
Told with lyrical prose, psychological depth, and unflinching honesty, this is a story about beauty and trauma, how we wound and how we mend. For fans of deeply character-driven queer fiction and the raw, redemptive honesty of women who survive.