“SUGAR, SPICE & THE NOT-SO-NICE: FOUR YA ROM-COMS”

Four young adult authors discuss how love can form under pressure or flare up with passion. The daughter of a proud Cuban family bakery enters a competition to pay the bills with help from the son of a rival Cuban bakery in Guava and Grudges, the slow-burn (or bake) enemies-to-lovers novel by ALEXIS CASTELLANOS. Tensions rise in LAURA TAYLOR NAMEY’s With Love, Echo Park as the two last surviving Cuban family businesses in an L.A. borough struggle to stay afloat while their freshly-graduated teens weigh independence and family and try not to fall in love during a hot, hot summer. If You Can’t Take the Heat by MICHAEL RUHLMAN drops a high school football star with a broken leg, broken heart, and secret talent for cooking into a cutthroat, upscale French restaurant to discover new loves, hot rivalries, and the steep cost of success. Love and hate dance across the pages of Canto Contigo by JONNY GARZA VILLA as the singer in a competitive high school mariachi group finds himself in a new school where the rival and lead of their mariachi group is his own ex-situationship. Moderated by FLO SIMMONS, co-founded of the book review blog “Book Nerds Across America.” Grades 9-12

Buy Guava and Grudges – Castellanos

Buy With Love, Echo Park – Namey

Buy If You Can’t Take The Heat – Ruhlman

Buy Canto Contigo – Villa