Idara Udo: There is no love in the capital city, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Klappentext

There Is No Love in the Capital City Wendy arrives in the capital the way so many young women do: with one suitcase, an address written in someone else's handwriting, and a hope she's too embarrassed to say out loud. She wants what the postcards and phone calls back home have always promised her. A life. A home. Someone to build it with. Instead, she finds a city that doesn't care what she came for, and a series of men who are more than willing to let her believe, for a while, that they do. There's Julian first, charming and attentive, who calls her the same night he gets her number and gives her a drawer in his bedroom before she's even decided whether she belongs in his life. Then there's Desmond, older and careful, whose patience looks nothing like danger until Wendy finds herself tied to him through a job, an apartment, and a position that gives her importance without giving her any real power. Then comes Theo. He's different. Gentle. Patient. Self-aware. He seems to understand exactly what Wendy needs after everything she's been through. But when another woman's name begins appearing on his phone, Wendy discovers that even calm can be carefully constructed, and that a man doesn't have to raise his voice to make you doubt yourself. And then there's Adrian. He doesn't rush her. He doesn't overwhelm her. He doesn't seem interested enough to be dangerous. That's exactly what makes him dangerous. As Wendy moves from one relationship to another, each one teaches her a different version of the same lesson. She begins to lose pieces of herself in ways that seem reasonable at first: a friendship she stops making time for, a job she allows someone else to control, questions she decides not to ask, apologies she offers when she hasn't done anything wrong. Through it all are the women who see what Wendy cannot yet see. Sable, who keeps opening her door. Priss, who refuses to soften the truth. Corinne, who has learned the hard way what silence can cost. But seeing the pattern from the outside is one thing. Living inside it is another. There Is No Love in the Capital City is a story about manipulation, survival, friendship, and the slow process of finding your way back to yourself. It's about the difference between being chosen and being chosen for someone's convenience. About mistaking intensity for love, attention for intimacy, and calm for safety. Most of all, it's about what happens when a woman finally stops looking for someone else to complete her life and starts asking a much harder question: Who was she before she started disappearing for other people? By the time Wendy stands on the same train platform years later, watching her young cousin arrive with the same wide-eyed hope she once carried, she knows she can't protect her from everything. But she can tell her the truth. And sometimes, that is where saving yourself begins.