Bunkmates, Besties, Boyfriends: Three Irresistible Romances

Gabriela Martins is a Brazilian kid lit author and linguist. Her stories feature Brazilian characters finding themselves and love. She is a former high school teacher and has worked as a TED Ed-Club facilitator, where she helped teens develop their own talks. She also edited and self-published Keep Faith, a pro-bono LGBTQ+ anthology. Her debut novel, Like a Love Song (Underlined), follows Natalie, a Brazilian pop star living her dream, topping the charts and setting records – until she’s dumped spectacularly on live television. The incident is not only humiliating, it could end her career. What is her PR team’s desperate plan? A gorgeous yet oh-so-fake boyfriend. Natalie reluctantly agrees, but William is not what she expected. She was hoping for a fierce bad boy – not a soft-hearted British indie film star. While she fights her way back to the top, Natalie starts to fall for William, and realizes that maybe she’s the biggest fake of them all. Can she reclaim her voice and her heart? Jennifer Dugan, the author of Hot Dog Girl, called it the “perfect ode to falling in love while you’re still finding your voice.”

Alli Hoff Kosik is a writer and the creator and host of the SSR Podcast. Her work has appeared in various media including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, Medium, HelloGiggles, The Kitchn, and the New York Post.

Raquel Vasquez Gilliland is a Mexican American poet, novelist, and painter. She has published two collections of poetry: Dirt and Honey: Poems and Tales From the House of Vasquez. Her previous young adult novel is Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything. Moon, the central character in How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers), accepts her fate as the ugly, unwanted sister hidden in the background of her twin, a social media star. But when she takes a job on a tour bus full of beautiful influencers, her unexpected bunkmate and new nemesis is the grumpy and hot Santiago. As chance and destiny bring them together, she starts to question her fate as the unnoticed, unloved wallflower. Booklist praised it as “amazingly realistic; this book is the coming-of-age story that teens need, wrapped in a gorgeously poetic package.”

Sarah Dass was born in Trinidad but has lived in Tobago since she was 2 years old. She works as an office administrator by day and writes stories about the Caribbean by night. Her debut novel, Where the Rhythm Takes You (Balzer + Bray), was inspired by her childhood spent in a seaside hotel and tells the story of 17-year-old Reyna, who has spent most of her life at her family’s gorgeous seaside resort in Tobago. But what once seemed like paradise is starting to feel like purgatory. It’s been two years since her mother passed away and Aiden – Reyna’s childhood best friend, first kiss, first love, first everything – left the island to pursue his music dreams. Her friends are all planning their futures and heading abroad; even her father seems ready to move on. Then Aiden returns – as a VIP guest of the resort, no less – with his Grammy-nominated band and two gorgeous LA socialites, and he finds Reyna exactly where he left her. Publishers Weekly said “inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Dass interweaves the allure of the source material with the warm tropical winds and scents of Tobago. Readers, even those unfamiliar with Austen’s work, will appreciate this cast of characters with believable motivations and fleshed-out ideas as they realize what they want and embrace second chances for love and for new adventures.”