The Longing I Hate

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice.
Ivo Maran has spent five winters loving Vera Ilin from a safe distance, turning his longing into jokes, private rituals, and stories he can tell at the café. In Kaltava, a small town where everyone notices everything, it is easier to make people laugh than to admit what hurts.

Vera is the apothecary’s daughter, competent and sharp, with a life of her own beyond Ivo’s imagination. But as his jealousy grows, especially toward the seemingly effortless Danko Ruz, Ivo begins to mistake his own fears for truth. The stories he tells to protect himself slowly become the very things that threaten what little exists between them.

When the consequences of his words finally become impossible to ignore, Ivo must face a painful question: does loving someone give him the right to turn them into a story?

Set among snow-covered streets, a railway signal room, a neighborhood café, and the warm light of an old pharmacy, The Longing I Hate is a quiet romance about unrequited love, jealousy, shame, and the difficult courage of letting another person remain free.