Literary Fiction meets Romance in the most gut-wrenching addicting way.

After a constant string of losses, she thought the boy she met at fifteen was the one for her. The first boy to show her any attention, and the first love she ever experienced from a man.

Their relationship doesn't make sense to anyone, but to Lydia, it feels like everything. It's electric, passionate, all-consuming, and because it's her first love, Lydia doesn't question it.

But the deeper she gets, even through the haze, she realizes the relationship is slowly chipping away at her sense of self. She fights to hide the ugly parts of it from the world…until she can't anymore.

After Eli breaks her in the worst way possible, Lydia is pushed into a chaos of her own making, unable to cope with the devastating aftermath.

Unfortunately, when chaos is all you've known…peace feels foreign.

Lydia learns the only way to survive is to numb.

She doesn’t think she can feel anything for anyone again…Until Bash.

A boy with his own past, his own struggles, and new faith, still learning how to stand.

Bash and Lydia both fight their constant pull to each other.

She doesn’t want to be saved, and he doesn’t want a savior complex.

But no matter how far Lydia goes, he keeps showing up for her—through the walls she built, the sharp words meant to cut deep, and the darkness she thinks will swallow her whole, he finds all the small ways to hold on to her when she can't hold on for herself.

He doesn’t try to fix her, and he doesn’t run from her darkness.

He stays steady for her, walking her through things they both don’t understand.

And in the quiet wreckage, Lydia starts to experience what love looks like when it doesn’t hurt…Tell Me I'm Not the Villain is not your typical coming-of-age romance–it's gut-wrenchingly raw and human.