What to read after Forward?

Iulia Dobre-Trifan, author of "Provocari si echilibru in coaching executiv pragmatic" and co-author of "A Calendar of Realistic Smiles", creates a novel about becoming, healing and courage, which spans over 40 years, interweaving complex characters from different worlds, all gravitating around a common timeless axis: the desire for happiness.

Lia, a tenacious woman who has been working successfully on her own for many years, starts a new project, one that is very dear to her: A teahouse where tired people would be able to rest and to find their balance.

Having faced several challenges that had tested her will and her confidence in her own path, Lia now wants to help other people who are in need of support. She surrounds herself with talented people, together with whom she turns her dreams into reality, and, day after day, the teahouse becomes a sanctuary for innocence.

But not everything is as it seems… some visitors hide dark intentions. Attracted by the brightness and the beauty of the teahouse and giving in to their predatory nature, they attack in subtle and ferocious ways.

"We are taught to view the world in black and white, good and bad, just or unjust. The author shows us a world full of nuances under constant change, which challenges us and makes us (re-)discover it with every step." Ciprian Dobre-Trifan

"An exciting story that evokes the intertwining of different destinies. A closed, withdrawn lifestyle, filled with shadows, collides with the harmonious development of a bright destiny filled with pragmatic magic." Andrei Cristian

How will Lia manage to defend the harmony of the present from these disturbing forces?

"When I was young, I thought I could save them all. All those who would ask to be saved and who would impress me with their poor victim stories, seemingly oppressed by adverse circumstances they were not able to handle. And I would get mixed up into their sad stories, taking onto myself the responsibility of helping them to see the light, to find the way out from their own labyrinths of bad luck and helplessness.

It took some badly ended relationships for me to understand it is impossible to save someone who does not want to be saved, or, even more, who is not willing to pull their weight for being saved. "

"The more people, the more fantasies about happiness.

Unfortunately, most of these fantasies rarely get to happen, in the real world. And this is how the inner conflict that troubles each and everyone of us appears. To want to live in a certain way, fully benefiting from that emotion, and to have reality be very different from your fantasy. And, still, you talk yourself into believing that things are as you want them to be. As you fantasize about them. As you wish to know happiness. Or balance. 

Happiness and balance are the same thing."