Abel and Maya by Veronika Barany

My Rating - 5 out of 5 stars

Publisher - Self-Published
Genre - Contemporary Fiction
Publishing year - 2025
Language - English
ASIN - B0FL45VCHN
Pages - 264

Book Review -

Some love stories make you believe in grand romantic gestures, while others make you question what it truly means to love someone. Abel and Maya by Veronika Barany belongs to the latter category. It explores the complexities of building a life with another person when love, personal ambitions, childhood experiences, and unspoken expectations begin to collide.

As someone who has read my fair share of romance novels, I found this book quite different from what I am accustomed to reading. This is not your typical college or high school romance, nor is it one of those stories where grown adults are constantly swept away by their feelings. Instead, it presents a relationship that feels remarkably human, with all its imperfections, misunderstandings, and difficult choices.

The story follows Abel, an ambitious medical student who dreams of becoming a surgeon, and Maya, a psychology student at the University of Toronto who aspires to become a teacher and complete her doctorate. 

Both carry emotional wounds from their childhoods. Abel comes from a dysfunctional family, while Maya lost her parents when she was young. Their experiences have shaped their understanding of love, security, and family, influencing how they approach their relationship and envision their future.

Abel is reserved, controlled, and deeply focused on his ambitions, whereas Maya longs for happiness, belonging, and emotional safety. For her, building a family means finding the security she missed growing up. 

However, creating a happy life together proves more complicated than either might have imagined. Their differences, individual priorities, and unspoken expectations gradually influence their relationship, making them confront the realities of being together.

What I particularly appreciated about this novel is that neither character is entirely right or wrong. Both want their relationship to work, yet their understanding of what that requires does not always align. 

Sometimes, the things they say create problems, while at other times, it is what they leave unsaid that drives them apart. Their struggles demonstrate how childhood experiences can influence adult relationships in ways people may not fully recognise.

The story also explores power dynamics within a relationship, including the intimate aspects of sharing a life with someone. I found this particularly thought-provoking because power struggles are not always obvious. They can emerge through expectations, emotional withdrawal, differing needs, and the difficulty of balancing individual ambitions with shared responsibilities. This aspect gave me a fresh perspective on intimacy and the complexities of navigating a relationship.

Another element I enjoyed was the presence of friends and family surrounding Abel and Maya. Their relationship does not exist in isolation, and the tensions within their wider social circles add depth to the narrative. Veronika Barany balances these dynamics well while keeping the central relationship at the heart of the story. I also liked that both characters have ambitions beyond their romance, giving them individual identities and aspirations that influence the life they are trying to build together.

There were moments when Abel and Maya genuinely irritated me with their decisions. I found myself wondering why they could not approach certain situations differently. However, that frustration eventually became one of the reasons I found them believable. 

People do not always make sensible decisions, even when they know what they want. Sometimes, we repeat familiar patterns without understanding why, and recognising a problem does not automatically mean knowing how to resolve it.

This book came to me at a particularly relevant time, as I have also been thinking about my own relationship and the patterns my partner and I sometimes find ourselves repeating. While reading about Abel and Maya, I caught myself reflecting on how misunderstandings can go beyond individual incidents and stem from deeper insecurities or unspoken expectations. 

I appreciated how the story encouraged me to look at these dynamics from a different perspective. For me, that made this reading experience more meaningful than simply following another fictional romance.

Veronika Barany's storytelling brings together personal ambitions, family histories, friendships, and romantic conflicts without reducing the characters to simplistic stereotypes. Rather than offering an idealised version of love, the novel explores what happens when two people must reconcile their individual needs with the life they want to create together.

I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy contemporary romance with flawed characters, emotional complexity, family dynamics, and realistic relationship struggles. If you prefer love stories that go beyond attraction and romantic gestures to examine the challenges of building a life together, this book deserves a place on your reading list.

Overall, I found it to be a thoughtful and engaging beginning to the Threads of Love and Loss series. It made me reflect on the characters long after I had finished reading, and I am eagerly waiting to pick up the second book to discover where their story goes next.

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