mantashawrites
Some families protect their children.
Some families protect their secrets.
Aarav Sharma has spent seventeen years living in a house that never truly felt like home. In a quiet Indian town during the late 1990s, life moves to the rhythm of cricket matches in narrow lanes, cassette tapes playing from open windows, monsoon evenings, and frequent power cuts. From the outside, his family seems ordinary.
Inside, silence speaks louder than love.
No one remembers his childhood. There are no photographs of him before the age of six. Questions are met with uneasy smiles, locked cupboards remain unopened, and every conversation seems to end the moment he walks into the room.
When a forgotten drawing, a mysterious woman in a faded blue saree, and whispers from the past begin to unravel the truth, Aarav is forced to confront a question that has followed him all his life:
Was he ever truly meant to belong here?
As long-buried family secrets rise to the surface, he discovers that sometimes the people who raise us aren't the ones who hide the deepest wounds-and sometimes, home isn't a place you inherit, but one you find.
Set against the warmth and melancholy of 1990s India, The House That Never Felt Like Home is a slow-burn coming-of-age novel about identity, family, love left unspoken, and the quiet search for where we truly belong.
A story of forgotten memories, hidden truths, and the courage to ask the questions no one wants answered.