I absolutely LOVE this series to bits! Vera and Mateo are beyond words!
He’s thirty-eight. I’m twenty-three.
He speaks Spanish. I speak English.
He lives in Spain. I live in Canada.
He dresses in thousand-dollar suits. I’m covered in tattoos.
He’s married and has a five-year old daughter.
I’m single and can’t commit to anyone or anything.
Until now.
Because when they say you can’t choose who you fall in love with, boy ain’t that the f*#king truth.
To a restless dreamer like Vera Miles, it sounded like the experience of a lifetime. Instead of spending her summer interning for her astronomy major, she would fly to Spain where she’d spend a few weeks teaching conversational English to businessmen and women, all while enjoying free room and board at an isolated resort. But while Vera expected to get a tan, meet new people and stuff herself with wine and paella, she never expected to fall in love.
Mateo is unlike anyone Vera has ever known, let alone anyone she’s usually attracted to. While Vera is a pierced and tatted free spirit with a love for music and freedom, Mateo Casales is a successful businessman from Madrid, all sharp suits and cocky Latino charm. Yet, as the weeks go on, the two grow increasingly close and their relationship changes from purely platonic to something…more.
Something that makes Vera feel alive for the first time.
Something that can never, ever be.
Or so she thinks.
I LOVED the Love, in English – A LOT! One of my favorite books of 2014 – check out my review here! And you can read Mateo’s Love Note from Valentine’s Day here!
“She sat beside me on the bus – and she changed my whole life.”
Successful, wealthy and absurdly handsome – Spanish ex-football player Mateo Casalles seemed like he had it all. A high-society wife, an adorable little girl, and flashy apartments in Madrid and Barcelona only sweetened the deal. But there was more to Mateo than met the eye – a life of uncertainty and regret that colored his black and white world.
That was until Vera Miles came into his life like a shooting star. Tattooed, wild and young, Vera seemed like Mateo’s polar opposite at first. But you can’t choose who you fall in love with and the two lost souls did everything they could to be together, all while suffering the grave consequences.
Now with Mateo divorced and living in Madrid with Vera, there is a whole new set of challenges and setbacks facing the couple and rocking the foundation of their star-crossed relationship.
Unfortunately for them, the brighter the star, the faster they burn.
We meet Josh in the Love, In English Series – he’s Vera’s brother and his book, Where Sea Meets Sky just came out! Check out my review here!
A new adult novel that perfectly captures the existential angst of your early twenties with raw wit, fresh insight, and true feeling from a critically adored USA TODAY bestselling author.
Joshua Miles has spent his early twenties spinning his wheels. Working dead-end jobs and living at home has left him exhausted and uninspired, with little energy to pursue his passion for graphic art. Until he meets Gemma Henare, a vivacious out-of-towner from New Zealand. What begins as a one-night stand soon becomes a turning point for Josh. He can’t get Gemma out of his head, even after she has left for home, and finds himself throwing caution to the wind for the first time in his life.
It’s not long before Josh is headed to New Zealand with only a backpack, some cash, and Gemma’s name to go on. But when he finally tracks her down, he finds his adventure is only just beginning. Equally infatuated, Gemma leads him on a whirlwind tour across the beautiful country, opening Josh up to life, lust, love, and all the messy heartache in between. Because, when love drags you somewhere, it might never let go even when you know you have to say goodbye.
And get ready for Amber’s book! We meet Amber in Where Sea Meets Sky – she’s awesome! I’m super excited to see what happens to her in Italy. You can read an excerpt here.
From the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of Where Sea Meets Sky comes a new adult novel about a young woman who becomes a nanny in Capri and falls for her charges’ bad-boy brother.
When I’m traveling, I feel like the secret to my life, to myself, to really becoming, is one step ahead. It’s in the next destination, the next town I get lost in, the next stranger I talk to. It’s always next but never here . . .After six months of backpacking and soul-searching across the world, Amber MacLean is flat broke. There are worse places for a twentysomething to be stuck than the Amalfi Coast, but the only way she can earn enough money for a plane ticket home to California is to teach English to two of the brattiest children she has ever met.
It doesn’t help that the children are under the care of their brooding older brother, ex-motorcycle racer Desiderio Larosa. Darkly handsome and oh-so-mysterious, the young master of the crumbling villa tests Amber’s patience and will at every turn—not to mention her hormones.
When her position turns into a full-time nanny gig, Amber grows dangerously closer to the enigmatic recluse. But can she give up the certainty of home for someone whose closely guarded heart feels a world apart from her own?
From Love, in Spanish
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
I turn in my chair and give Vera a curious look. Yet another English saying that I don’t know. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
She gives me a soft but tired smile and sits down on the arm rest. I immediately wrap my arm around her waist and pull her down into my lap, where she comes to a rest with a giggle, her hair obscuring the impish smile on her face. No matter where she is, I can never stop touching her and now more than ever I need her to relax, to feel safe, to know I’m going to get us out of this.
“Explain,” I demand. “Or I will punish you with kisses.”
She raises her brow. “Followed by punishment by penis?”
I shrug. “That can be arranged. Now, tell me my Estrella.”
She sighs and buries her lips into my neck. I can’t help the small moan that escapes from me, nor my hardness building beneath her plump, round ass. I close my eyes and fight the urge to pick her up and take her to the bedroom, the only other way I know how to make her feel safe and sated, the only way I know how to escape.
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” she says against my throat, “is a saying. I don’t know where it’s from but it means, well, nothing is scarier than a pissed off bitch.” She pauses, sucking in her breath and I know she fears she’s said the wrong thing. “Sorry,” she quickly adds and I feel her body tense up beneath my fingers. “I didn’t mean that Isabel is a bitch.”
She is still so skittish over her words, the way she blurts things out, but it’s one of the reasons why I love her. I cup the back of her head with my hand and let the softness of her hair sink over me. “I know you didn’t,” I assure her. “And, well, she is being a bitch.”
“Can you blame her though?” she asks, her voice rising a pitch and when she pulls away from me, her eyes are wet. It breaks my heart. I’m getting tired of my heart breaking and I know that this isn’t going to change anytime soon. Every day there is another weight on us, another crack appears.
“No,” I tell her honestly. “I cannot blame her.”
A silence lapses over us, heavy like a wool cloak. It does this sometimes. What we’ve done, it coats us.
Finally she clears her throat. “She’s going to hurt for a long time,” she says. “She’s going to be angry. This isn’t going away. I thought everything was behind us now, that she’d move on. You’ve been divorced for a year, if she’s still this mad a year out…”
“She is mad because I am going back to Atletico,” I tell her. “She is mad because of the paparazzi, the way they are hounding us again. She is mad because she feels she is being made to look like a fool. If I had just stayed with my head down, she wouldn’t be doing this.”
“But you can’t live your life in fear, Mateo,” she tells me.
I smile at her and brush her sunset hair from her face. “And neither can you.”
She settles back against my body, sinks, conforms, melds. She is second skin. She is a part of myself I can’t bear to separate from. I pray I never have to. I pray we can survive whatever is coming our way.
And I can feel it coming, that tension, that storm rolling in the weeks and days.
I pick her up in my arms and for all her pillowy curves, she weighs nothing more than a feather. I take her down the hall to the bedroom, throw her on the bed. She glows in the afternoon sun that streams in through our window and it isn’t long before we are both naked and I am climbing over her, pinning her arms above her head and drinking in her body like the most beautiful, decadent wine.
I will devour her until all of this is gone.
I will consume her until we are all that’s left.
I push inside her and let my hunger take over.
Karina Halle is the New York Times bestselling author of Where Sea Meets Sky, The Pact, Love in English, and other wild and romantic reads. A former travel writer and music journalist, she lives on an island off the coast of British Columbia with her husband and her rescue pup, where she drinks a lot of wine, hikes a lot of trails, and devours a lot of books.