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Sacrifices
Love Beyond Eros follows a man whose disappearance from a remote Greek village, following a painful turning point in his relationship, quickly becomes a dangerous life-or-death mystery. What is the most challenging aspect of writing a series?
Apart from trying to keep the reader attracted by mixing action, drama, and humour, for me the most challenging aspect was to keep the characters’ arcs real and growing. The series has multiple secondary main characters which are vital to the story, but also a large number of other characters which had to fit the story whilst, in a short time, showing their own traits and character arc growth. Even more challenging was the fact that the main character and the secondary main characters were based on real-life cases because I had to fictionalise aspects to hide their true identity, and I had to balance real-life events with fictionalised events.
The story suggests that love can require difficult choices and personal sacrifice. Do you believe sacrifice is an essential part of deep love?
In the normal day-to-day discussions or conversations, I agree with the statement that love requires sacrifices from both parties. However, in the non-discussional but very real world, those who find true love do not consider giving up something or giving priority to the other partner a sacrifice. When real love is present, there is no longer an ego. There is pure psychic fulfilment, which becomes an inner pleasure to prioritise giving rather than taking.
How do you decide when a story needs another twist or complication?
In my case, I wrote the story before knowing how to write a story. I wanted to pass the message again through my experience as a Hypno-Psychoanalyst, which proved case after case that sex is not the main or only ailment of psychological problems, as Sigmund Freud proposes. Case after case, the main ailment was love, even the misconception of love. Love within erotic partners, love within a family, parents, siblings, friends, and so on. Therefore, I had to keep the story interesting whilst passing real messages.
After writing the story, I had to learn how to write a story by studying the fathers of storytelling from Aristoteles to MaGee and other contemporary teachers. Luckily, I was within 80% of the correct storytelling architecture. But I had to go back and rewrite.
How I decided if the story needed another twist is that I imagine the story as the architect’s plan, which needs to be followed by a builder to construct a house or a building. Each room needs a door. So each section of the story has to have its own room with its own door. I looked to make sure each section of the story moved the story forward whilst completing its own mini architectural plan whilst simultaneously being a necessary part of the story. If not, I had to rewrite or introduce another twist or complication first to make it interesting for the reader to continue reading and second to make sure it fitted in the story whilst moving the story forward.
Therefore, a combination of factors: keep it interesting for the reader, make sure it is part of the architecture, and no sections missing, and be the step forward to the next section of the story.
What is one thing about Love Beyond Eros that you think might surprise readers?
That indeed there is such a level of true love very few believe exists these days.
If you were to ask me for more than one important thing that will surprise readers, I would say that whoever reads the trilogy will gain some level of love therapy. In fact, every time they read, they will gain more love therapy. Readers will heal many love-related psychological ailments that may affect them on a subconscious level.
Despite being a fiction story, the messages passed are real, based on real clinical cases.
The love secret is real, but the beauty of love is to be found without using the love secret.
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When Aris disappears, those who love him are drawn into a desperate search as danger closes in and long-hidden truths emerge.
Relationships are tested by betrayal, obsession and forgiveness. Friends become family. Enemies reveal unexpected humanity. Some must fight to preserve love; others must find the courage to let go of what has caused too much pain.
As Aris draws ever closer to the Love Secret, he discovers that its greatest truths cannot simply be uncovered: they must be lived.
Inspired by real cases from a London hypno-psychoanalyst’s practice, Love Beyond Eros is the third novel in The Love Secret Series.
Fast-moving, psychologically perceptive and unexpectedly funny, the story of Aris and Angelica moves between danger and tenderness, heartbreak and laughter, sometimes within the same unforgettable scene.
Love Beyond Eros
Love Beyond Eros, the third book in Chris Neo’s The Love Secret series, is an ambitious mix of romantic drama, psychological exploration, family story, and high-stakes adventure. The novel begins with Aris missing from the remote Greek village where his relationship with Angelica has reached a painful turning point, then quickly turns his disappearance into a life-or-death crisis. From there, the story keeps expanding, bringing friends, family members, military figures, enemies, and former lovers into an increasingly elaborate chain of events. That scope fits Neo’s stated purpose for the series: he wants an emotionally driven story that explores love and relationships while keeping the plot moving quickly. What makes the book distinctive is how fully it commits to that combination. Love here isn’t simply romantic attraction. It becomes the force behind friendship, loyalty, sacrifice, jealousy, forgiveness, parenthood, and the difficult choices people make when someone they care about is in danger.
The emotional center of the novel is Aris, but the story works through a large ensemble, and several of the most interesting developments happen because other characters are forced to reconsider who they are. Angelica’s devotion to Aris becomes fierce and protective. John and Uri discover that friendship means showing up even when they’re frightened, inconvenienced, or powerless to fix the situation. Varo has one of the book’s largest arcs, moving through obsession, suspicion, buried trauma, loyalty, and a growing understanding of her own past. Granny, Zoe, Gina, Adonis, and others each contribute another variation on the book’s central question: what does loving someone actually require of you? The title gradually earns its importance because the novel keeps pushing beyond eros, or romantic desire, toward agape, family bonds, friendship, compassion, and self-sacrifice. Angelica eventually gives that idea its clearest expression when she describes a love that reaches beyond eros, tying the title directly to the emotional argument the story has been building.
Neo tells all of this in a deliberately heightened style. The book moves from a Greek village and a mysterious poisoning into military flights, international maneuvering, assassins, rescues, betrayals, martial arts confrontations, family reunions, pregnancies, old romances, and long-delayed revelations. It has the energy of a serialized adventure, with short chapters and frequent shifts in location and perspective designed to keep another complication arriving just as the previous one settles. That can make the experience feel almost breathless, but it also gives the novel its personality. Serious conversations about love and identity can sit beside broad comedy, sensual scenes, action sequences, and larger-than-life characters without the story losing its basic emotional direction. By the final chapter and epilogue, the sprawling cast has been drawn back toward family, healing, changed relationships, and the possibility of another journey, giving the ending the feeling of both a conclusion and a continuation.
I’d recommend Love Beyond Eros most strongly to readers who enjoy emotionally intense stories that combine romance with adventure, family drama, friendship, danger, and questions about why people love the way they do. It should especially appeal to readers who like big casts, dramatic reversals, passionate dialogue, Greek cultural touches, and characters whose emotional growth matters as much as the physical action surrounding them. Since this is Book Three, it will have the greatest impact on readers who already know Aris, John, Uri, Varo, Angelica, and the relationships developed earlier in The Love Secret series. The novel asks for a reader willing to enter its heightened world and care about its characters with the same intensity that they care about one another. For that reader, this is a generous, eventful finale built around a sincere idea: desire may begin a love story, but loyalty, sacrifice, forgiveness, friendship, and family are what reveal how deep love can become.
Pages: 416 | ASIN : B0CXB6NQTL
