Before You

by Amber Hart

Overview

Faith Watters has a picture-perfect life. Captain of the dance team, popular, happy. She even spent her junior year traveling the world before returning to Orlando High School for senior year. But she's living a lie.

Diego Alvarez hates his new life in the States, but staying in Cuba is not an option. Covered in tattoos and scars, Diego doesn't fit in, and doesn't want to. His only concern is his secret past-a past, which if it were to surface, would cost him his life. The last thing he needs is a beautiful, infuriating distraction like Faith. Keep a low profile. Graduate. Don't fall for Faith. If only it were that easy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798989939121
Publisher:	Amber Hart
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Amber Hart grew up in Orlando, Florida, and Atlanta, Georgia. She now resides on the Florida coastline with family and animals including, but not limited to, bulldogs, a cat, and dragons. When unable to find a book, she can be found writing, daydreaming, or with her toes in the sand. You can visit her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/amberhartbooks.

Editorial Reviews

07/21/2014
Hart debuts with a steamy romance about affirming love. Faith Watters, 18, returns for her senior year in Oviedo, Fla., after a year in rehab that no one knows about except for her family and best friend, Melissa. Ever since Faith was abandoned by her drug-addicted mother 10 years earlier, she has felt compelled to act the part of her pastor father's perfect daughter. Every aspect of Faith's life feels stifling, including her relationship with her bland boyfriend of four years that resembles an "arranged marriage." When she's assigned to be a "peer helper" to cocky new student Diego Alvarez, the physical attraction between them is immediate. Their inaccurate assumptions about one another and defensive personalities cause conflicts, yet as trust builds, Faith reveals her family history, and Diego confesses his involvement with a drug cartel. As Hart alternates between Faith and Diego's self-aware and expressive first-person narratives, readers will be invested in the couple's intense cross-cultural relationship as they persevere despite an onslaught of personal and societal pressures. Ages 14–up. Agent: Beth Miller, Writers House. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

2014-06-04
The daughter of a pastor and a young man on the run from a Cuban drug cartel get past their initial animosity to fall in love in this sexy romance.Prickly, wary 18-year-old Diego is disgusted with the beautiful and collected young woman assigned to escort him through his first day of school, assuming she is a snob. Faith, also 18, finds Diego, with multiple scars and tattoos, annoyingly cocky yet attractive: “He is a boy with eyes like hope, with scars that tell stories….I don’t trust myself around him.” She has erected a carefully crafted facade to disguise her fear of abandonment and a secret year in rehab, while Diego’s past has left him ready to brutally fight when threatened. The pair tell their story in alternating, present-tense chapters. Their two families are well-drawn; Diego and his relatives speak in English with a sprinkling of Spanish, which contrasts with Faith’s Anglo background. The plot moves slowly for the first two-thirds of the novel, then presents a series of shocks. Hart’s writing in this debut conveys a lot of physical and emotional feeling but works a little too hard in places (“Under my fingertips her blood pulses fast, a one-way train on a track bound for collision”).This riff on West Side Story is torrid and heartfelt if not at all subtle, with a sequel featuring Faith’s best friend still to come. (Romance. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews