_merikatha_
Inaya runs a grief counseling service for the broken-hearted, but there's just one problem....
she's not a real therapist.
What began as a desperate hustle to survive turned into a strangely therapeutic game : she listens to people mourn their lost lovers, takes notes, asks the right questions... and gives the wrong advice. But when several of her clients start describing eerily similar tragedies, lovers dying under mysterious circumstances, all somehow connected to one man - Inaya's carefully constructed lie starts to unravel.
That man is Rayaan: quiet, unreadable, and too familiar for someone she's supposedly never met.
As Inaya dives deeper into the pasts of the people who died, and into Rayaan's haunted world, she begins to question her own history - the fragments of fire she dreams about, the name she doesn't remember, and the truth she might've buried to stay alive.
What if the man she's investigating is the one person who's known her all along?
What if the stranger... was never him?
She Was Never a Stranger is a fictional dark romcom-thriller where laughter covers trauma, love hides behind lies, and healing comes with a body count.
>>>She fell for him without knowing the truth.
He knew the truth and still didn't fall back.
Because some love stories aren't written to end well - they're written to be survived.