Heat Factor: Not completely, but pretty chaste
Character Chemistry: “OMG! Does he like me?!?!” “Girl, he’s so into you!”
Plot: Please see Character Chemistry
Overall: This book is high school.
Heat Factor: slooooooooooooow burn
Character Chemistry: sparking constantly
Plot: Pairs figure skating team antagonizes each other into a HEA
Overall: low drama, satisfying slow burn
Looking for a new author? Here’s everything you need to know about Mariana Zapata, whose books include Kulti, Under Locke, and Dear Aaron.
Contemporary romance with the world’s slowest burns from the heroine’s 1st person POV.
She writes heroines with all the emotional angst who are somehow also relatable and reserved heroes who we just KNOW have caught feelings even though they haven’t said so. The burn is constant but extremely slow, with no acknowledgement of feelings or sex until the last quarter of the book.
The perspective is always the heroine’s POV, so the style reflects the voice of a 20-something woman, usually from an economically disadvantaged or working class background. The text itself is engaging but not particularly polished, with some incorrect word use and points of redundancy when the heroines are feeling particularly angsty. The books are extremely long for romance, often 500 pages or more.
The protagonists never have insta-love, they both fall in love during the course of the novel, so there’s always emotional growth and change. The POV means that the heroes are opaque, so we have to infer what they’re feeling, which means a great deal of showing rather than telling to demonstrate the development of the relationship. This makes the declarations of love really pop.
You like polished writing OR fast-moving plots OR heroes who are not opaque OR quick, incendiary burns.
“Do what you have to do to be happy, okay? No one else is going to do it for you.”
–The Best Thing
Cursing and body humor (talking about poop is not at all uncommon), sometimes uncomfortable metaphors (going on a death march, noose around my neck, lots of ripping of new assholes), use of “girl” instead of “woman”.
If you kind of miss the satisfaction of waiting FOREVER for Gilbert Blythe to declare his love for Anne Shirley, but you also like some sexytimes after a declaration of love, Mariana Zapata might really hit the spot.
Kulti or Rhythm, Chord & Malykhin
Heat Factor: Well now I’m curious about penis piercings / I didn’t know MZ could write so much, so hot sex
Character Chemistry: All the butterflies
Plot: Jerky, ex-felon, tattoo artist biker with an anger management issue can’t keep his hands off his friend’s little sister who also happens to work in his shop
Overall: I can’t believe how much I liked this book
Heat Factor: Sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooow burn
Character Chemistry: They’re such good soccer besties!
Plot: Women’s soccer star befriends former men’s soccer star coach
Overall: This is a pretty good enemies to friends to lovers romance. But it’s also 570 pages.
