In Orvaine, a brass instrument measures how much two people love each other. Marit Ilve scored one of the highest readings in forty years.
Two years later she can barely stand the man it chose for her, and she is about to find out the instrument was never measuring love.
Two people sit opposite one another.
A brass instrument rests between them.
The needle rises, and stops on a number.
Orvaine calls that number the Draw, and believes it measures how much two people will love each other.
The Draw · taken once, at twenty, and recorded for lifeEveryone told Marit she had found the kind of love most people spend their lives searching for.
They were wrong.
The further Ravel retreats, the more desperately she wants him close.
And the more she reaches for him, the further away he seems to go.
Orvaine calls that pull love.
Then Marit discovers records that should not exist.
Couples with almost no reading at all.
Failures. Nulls. People the instrument said could never truly love each other.
Except some of them became the happiest couples in Orvaine.
Orvaine has built its entire idea of love around one assumption:
The stronger the feeling, the stronger the love.
But longing feels strong.
Uncertainty feels strong.
Fear feels strong.
The terror of losing someone can feel almost indistinguishable from wanting them.
What Orvaine calls love begins to look remarkably like something psychologists call:
The attachment system.
And once Marit learns to see it, she starts seeing it everywhere.
Why do we want someone more when they pull away?
Why can closeness make another person retreat?
Why can uncertainty feel like chemistry?
Why can calm, available love sometimes feel less exciting?
The Honest Distance makes those patterns easier to see because you experience them before you ever have to name them.
And why feeling intensely about someone is not always the same as feeling safe with them.
A complete 94,000-word standalone fantasy novel.
A woman discovers that the instrument her civilization has trusted to measure love may actually be measuring fear.
Finding the truth means questioning her marriage, her life’s work and everything her country believes about why two people belong together.
Once she sees the difference between love and the fear of losing it, she cannot unsee it.
Neither may you.
94,000 words · Standalone story
Short explanations connecting key moments to attachment psychology
Anxious, avoidant and secure in plain terms, tied back to the story
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Read an excerpt firstClosed door, held consistently across all twenty-four chapters.
Real desire, real tension, hands and mouths and the undoing of things. The scene ends before explicit sex and picks up after.
If closed door is a dealbreaker for you, this is the book to skip, and I would rather tell you here than in a review.
No.
The Honest Distance is an entirely original fantasy novel exploring attachment theory through fiction.
If Attached introduced you to anxious, avoidant and secure attachment, you will recognize many of the same underlying relationship dynamics here.
A fantasy novel.
The Honest Distance is a complete story with its own world, romance, mystery and plot.
Attachment psychology is woven into what happens rather than taught from the sidelines.
Not at all.
The story works whether you already know attachment theory or have never heard the term before.
EPUB and PDF, delivered digitally after purchase.
The Honest Distance
A fantasy novel about attachment, desire, distance and the feelings we mistake for love.
94,000-word standalone fantasy · EPUB + PDF · Instant access