Julieta and the Romeos

by Maria E. Andreu

Genres: YA Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

You’ve Got Mail meets a YA Beach Read with a bookish mystery at its heart in the newest rom-com from Maria E. Andreu. The ideal next read for fans of Emily Henry, Kasie West, and Jennifer E. Smith.

Julieta isn’t looking for her Romeo—but she is writing about love. When her summer writing teacher encourages the class to publish their work online, the last thing she’s expecting is to get a notification that her rom-com has a mysterious new contributor, Happily Ever Drafter. Julieta knows that happily ever afters aren’t real. (Case in point: her parents’ imploding marriage.) But then again, could this be her very own meet-cute?

As things start to heat up in her fiction, Julieta can’t help but notice three boys in her real life: her best friend’s brother (aka her nemesis), the boy next door (well, to her abuela), and her oldest friend (who is suddenly looking . . . hot?). Could one of them be her mysterious collaborator? But even if Julieta finds her Romeo, she’ll have to remember that life is full of plot twists. . . . 

From the author of Love in English comes a fresh take on love and romance, and a reminder to always be the author of your own life story.

Release date: May 16, 2023

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 400

Sample

One

If I could write this story, we would not be at the town pool. I would not be trying to make my flimsy beach towel stretch enough to keep my thighs from sticking to the plastic lounge. Ivy’s island-sized hat would not be poking the side of my head while I blink to get the hastily applied sunscreen out of my watering, stinging eyes.

But I’m not writing this story, so here I am.

As a reflex, I reach down to pat the side of my mom’s old pink beach bag to feel the outline of my writer’s notebook through it. I won’t take it out and risk slathering it in Coppertone just yet, but the feel of it through the bag reassures me. I will my brain to soak everything in so I can write it all down later, even how the sunscreen is causing a greasy film to obscure half the world. And by “world,” I just mean the Alderton Town Pool, its concrete deck around the ice-blue water, the lap lanes cordoned off so that the oldsters can do laps undisturbed while the loud seventh graders try to jump on each other’s heads. It’s a whole microcosm of our town contained inside a chain-link fence: the kiddie splash pool with the anxious-looking young moms no more than a foot away from big-cheeked babies; the main pool where the middle schoolers’ moms eat carrot sticks and ignore their kids entirely; the highly regulated diving boards you have to pass a test to even touch; the grass we’re on littered with lounge chairs that have seen better days.

I am here for one reason and one reason only: Ivy Madigan, best friend extraordinaire and ride-or-die since grammar school. Ivy has impeccable taste in all things, like any girl who has grown up in a princess house. She has just one giant hole in her judgment: she loves it here.

I can’t for the life of me understand why.

She looks absolutely thrilled. I mean . . . all of us Alderton lifers have loved this place at some point. The only difference is that, for most of us, the love affair ended sometime around first kisses and the onset of BO. But her love glows just as brightly today as it did since she passed her diving test.

She’s talking beside me, animated, conspiratorial. “And then she said that if he was going to be like that about it, he was uninvited to her family vacation. Which, you know, it had been a bear for her to convince her parents to even let her ask him to go. This could make things really awkward at the epic party I plan to throw when my parents are away.”

“Mm-hmm,” I say absently.

Ivy cocks her head

at me in disappointment, sunglasses like two giant saucers on her face. “Jules, that is the third bit of major scoop I have laid on you since we sat down, all fresh post-school, and we’ve only been out for two days.”

“Makenna, Joshua, fight, check.”

“You know I collect all this juicy gossip for you in the hopes of seeing it in a major blockbuster novel someday.”

I laugh. “No, you don’t.”

“Okay, not only for that reason. But also for that reason.”

Ivy and I may seem like unlikely friends to some. With her flawless, salon-highlighted blond hair and baby pink acrylics, she fills out her pastel yellow bikini in a way that gets her free snow cones at the concession stand and adoring looks from the guy who checks passes at the door. I’m firmly under the umbrella so I don’t get burned, am in a very sensible one-piece, and have a selection of three novels, plus my notebook, in my bag for when she inevitably decides she needs to swim laps. But we work, somehow. She listens to all my mad story ideas, encourages me, cheers me on. I come to the pool when she insists and let her drag me to more parties than I’d naturally go to on my own. It’s been a winning formula for a decade. Well, it was more dolls and floaties at the start, plus long, lazy summer afternoons filled with scavenger hunts we used to concoct for one another. But we’ve grown through our various stages together.

“Speaking of novels, are you working on anything for your summer school thing yet?”

“A, it’s not summer school. B, it hasn’t even started yet.”

“It’s summer, and you’re going to school, so . . .”

“Please stop calling it summer school. This thing is the most prestigious high school writing intensive in New York. Maybe the country. Led by one of my absolutely favorite writers.”

“I didn’t realize old Will was teaching at Fairchild.”

“Live writer.”

She seems to have taken it personally that I actually liked Macbeth when we were in English class together. She blamed it on my name. Which, thanks, Parents, for inadvertently saddling me with that association. But also I just thought the witches were pretty awesome, and I had a grudging respect for Lady Macbeth’s steely determination. Ivy has not let me live it down since.

She settles back into her lounge. “Ryan won’t show me what he’s writing, either.”

I let the comment go. Ryan is Ivy’s twin brother. For as much as I adore Ivy, I’m . . . we’ll say challenged by her brother, the overachieving twin without any of her winning disposition. I’ve been desperate to go to the Fairchild Summer Writing Intensive ever since I was a freshman; the application process is super competitive, and graduates go on to do amazing things. Their most famous alum and teacher, Paige Bingham, is my favorite author. She got a two-book deal while she was still a senior in college, and three of her books have been made into Netflix series or movies, including the absolutely swoon-worthy Forged, which introduced me to the sexy blacksmith I didn

’t even know I needed in my life. She’s kind of this mix between Emily Henry and Rebecca Serle but you can also tell she’s read some Flannery O’Connor, who I absolutely love. Finding out Ivy’s brother had also gotten in put a bit of a damper on my triumph.

I say, “Writers are funny that way. But on this summer program thing, I’m serious. This is a big deal for me.”

She puts a perfectly manicured hand on my forearm. “You know how proud I am of you.”

“Do I?”

“Jules! Yes.” Ivy scoots our chairs closer together, the meager grass trampled underfoot. “I’m sorry. I’m being a dick. Of course this summer is going to be amazing for you, because you are amazing. They’re going to hand you a million-dollar book deal in your first week and tell everyone else to go home and stop wasting their time. I’m just going to miss you, that’s all.”

“It’s a day program, Ivy.” I laugh. “I’m not going anywhere. Also, I’ve heard million-dollar book deals aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

She ignores this last part. “It’s our last real summer, you know? Next year we’ll be all distracted the summer before starting college. And you’re already so busy with the restaurant and everything.” She breaks off, is quiet for a second, then adds, “Forget it. I’m being a jerk. I’m probably just jealous, honestly.”

“Jealous?” I make my best You’re not serious face.

Ivy is effortlessly gorgeous, the kind of person everyone likes without her having to try. She’s been dating the star pitcher of the baseball team since the start of junior year. And, not like money is everything, but it sure must not stink that her family takes fancy vacations as if her parents secretly want to be Instagram influencers. She also does not, nor has she ever, had any interest whatsoever in writing, and her life is pretty charmed, so I’m not sure why Fairchild would spark anything but benign indifference for her.

“Why?” I ask.

“You know what you want to do with your life,” Ivy says. “Not only that, you’ve always known what you want to do with your life. You, like, popped out with a manual typewriter tucked under one tiny arm and a notebook full of ideas you’d been scribbling in there.”

I laugh. “I don’t know. I have plenty of doubts,” I say. I know what she means about my focus, and she’s not wrong. I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. When my brother and sister were tiny, I wrote them little plays that made them laugh and kept them entertained for hours, asking for new scenes. Even before they were born, my mom taught me to write when I was four, and I’d fill up marble composition books with ideas I thought were totally original, but which upon later reflection read not-so-mysteriously like whatever my favorite

Disney movie was at the time. I’ve written poems in math notebooks and character sketches on the backs of paper place mats during the off-hours at my family’s restaurant. I survived middle school writing notebook-length stories in which every member of whatever my favorite boy band was at the time was madly, tragically, epically in love with me.

Whenever I picture my life as a grown-up, I’m writing in cafés and sumptuous libraries and on luxurious overnight trains in exotic locales. I’m giving readings in elegant lecture halls and signing copies of my bestselling novels to a line of readers that is so long I can’t see the end of it.

Then I imagine my mother wondering aloud exactly how I plan to feed myself, and I suddenly remember I’ve never actually finished anything I’ve written.

It’s not that my family isn’t supportive. They are. They’re totally on board with this class, even though it’s going to mean fewer hours I can help out at the restaurant. But my parents are immigrants and business owners, buffeted by the winds of up and down years. We just put an especially hard season at our restaurant, Las Heras, behind us. Dreams are fine with them, as long as I have the grit and talent to turn them into reality. And maybe just a teensy bit they wish my dream involved something more dependable, like a medical degree.

I wish I felt more confident that I’ve got what it takes.

“Your writing is epic, and you know it,” Ivy says, reaching in her pool bag for the pistachios she always keeps in there. “Your hair, on the other hand . . .” She blows me a kiss, no hands, all pucker. “Maybe later you can come over and I can work on your tips? You need a refresh.”

I twist the ends of my hair around my fingers. The blue ombré was Ivy’s idea, right before finals: I wanted a change but didn’t want to go blond, like her, so she bleached out the ends of my unremarkable brown hair and added a pale blue and lavender that sparkled in the sun and which I loved instantly. It has been one of my favorite things of this year, feeling like the kind of girl who can have hair that stands out.

I’m about to agree when I’m startled by a voice right next to me saying, “Jules? I didn’t know you still came to the pool.”

I spot the feet attached to the voice first: worn leather sandals I could pick out of a lineup.

I turn to face the voice. I didn’t know Lucas came to the pool, either.

“Yeah, same, what are you doing?”

“I’m on little-cousin duty. He insisted.”

I follow his line of sight. His little cousin, who was a baby like fifteen minutes ago but now looks maybe seven or eight, is doing a serviceable doggy paddle at the pool’s edge, safe in floaties.

“What’s your excuse?” he adds.

I point a thumb at Ivy. “Best friend duty.”

She play-slaps my arm, and Lucas smiles in his crooked, familiar way. We’ve known each other since we were babies. His parents were the only other Argentinians in our neighborhood when my parents moved in, which was enough to make them immediate family. In the sixteen years since then, the two of us h

ave buried a half dozen goldfish in our yards together, played four million games of Uno, and have survived a cringey YouTube-video-production phase. He’s shared his potato-battery kit Christmas present. In the eighth grade, I insisted he teach me to tie a man’s tie because I’d written a list of things cool girls know how to do, and I couldn’t very well get him to teach me to drink whiskey at thirteen.

It’s strange to see him here, though. He looks different, somehow. His unruly curls look a little sun-kissed, his squinty light brown eyes lit up somehow. He’s in a Messi soccer shirt, but that’s on brand.

“Anyway,” he says now, “you working later?”

I shake my head. “Not till tomorrow.”

“Well,” he says, “see you tomorrow, then.”

We wave goodbye, and he heads across the concrete pool deck, pulling off his shirt as he goes. The muscles in his arms and back shift underneath his skin.

“Um,” Ivy begins, not even trying to act like she isn’t staring.

“Don’t say it.”

“I’m definitely going to say it, Julieta Talavera Toledo,” Ivy says, delighting in dropping my full, unwieldy name whenever she is making a particularly emphatic point. “When did Lucas get hot?”

“I said don’t say it!” I wave my hand as if I can bat away her words. “He’s basically like my cousin.”

“He’s not my cousin,” Ivy points out, pulling down her sunglasses to stare. “And he’s clearly been doing his push-ups.”

“What about M.J.?” M.J. is the boyfriend a photographer would pair Ivy with: ripped from his constant baseball practice, floppy haired, smart but not obnoxious about it. The fact that he’s been her actual boyfriend for like a year feels like it has a certain cosmic rightness to it.

She pushes her glasses back up. “What about M.J.?” she zings back. “I’m dating, not dead. I can appreciate a fine specimen of humanity when I see one. And I’ll add that from the look on your face right now it doesn’t seem like your feelings about this particular member of the species are exactly chaste, either.”

“Stop,” I mutter plaintively, reaching for my bag and trying to ignore the sudden heat in my chest. Lucas was shorter than me for our entire childhoods. But he’s grown like six inches since last summer. His hands and feet are suddenly enormous, the jut of his Adam’s apple pronounced. Before I can stop myself I’m imagining how I’d describe him if he was a character in a story I was writing: his liquidy, big, yellow-brown eyes; the curls that look less messy and more consciously tousled no

w; the distinctly grown-up cliff off his jawline; that line between boy and . . . not so much anymore.

I wipe my sunblock-smeared hands on the edges of my pool towel, then reach for my notebook. I have to. I yank it open to a fresh page and grab a pen. Ivy laughs and heads for the pool, presumably to get a closer look at the muscly stranger in the spot where dependable childhood friend Lucas used to be. 

If a familiar old shoe turned into a real boy and grew pecs. omg that’s terrible.

There are people you stop looking at because they’re as familiar as you are to yourself. That’s who L has always been to me. But life and muscle development have a way of surprising you.

Ugh.

He made his way to the pool with a distinct ripple to his muscles.

There is no easy way to do this.

Eyes: brown. Light brown. Golden brown. Hair: curly. Lips . . . No, let’s stay away from lips for now. Smile open, like he’s never hidden a single thing in his life. When dependable meets unexpected.

Two

My sister, Lucesita, is practicing her violin when I get downstairs the following morning, the barely recognizable screech of “Cielito Lindo” that scratches at my eardrums as I wait for the kettle to boil.

“Luz,” I growl, “could you possibly take that outside?”

Lucesita ignores me and keeps playing, her frizzy hair parted down the middle and held back near her temples with unicorn clips. My annoyance at the high-decibel violin fades at the sight of how, at eleven years old, she can so unselfconsciously still wear the trappings of the little girl she is fast on the way to not being anymore.

“It’s hot outside,” she mutters.

“It’s hot in here, too,” I point out, gesturing around at our small, cramped kitchen. “Also, do they really want you to play it so slowly? We’ll all be several years older before you finish. And why ‘Cielito Lindo,’ anyway?”

“I wonder if they know that song is Mexican, not Argentinian,” Jaime grumbles, looking younger than his twelve years. He’s on the arm of the living room couch, where he’s playing his Switch with the concentration of a royal jeweler cutting the world’s most important diamond.

My mom bustles into the kitchen before I can answer, already dressed in one of the businesslike polos she wears for her shifts at Las Heras, her salt-and-pepper hair bobbed short. “Morning,” she says.

“Morning,” I reply, handing her a glass of water as my tea steeps on the counter. “Do you want some?” I point my magdalena in her direction. If there’s one thing there’s plenty of in this house, it’s Argentinian pastries.

“Breakfast is for Americans,” she says, plucking the bow from Luz’s hand and setting it on top of the refrigerator; blessed quiet fills the humid air. “Drink your tea.”

I smile and spike my Earl Grey with enough lemon to make my entire mouth pucker, then plop in two packets of stevia. My mom and I have some variation of this conversation every morning. The list of things my mother believes are “for Americans” could fill a freight train. Air-conditioning, unfortunately, is among them, except under the direst of circumstances. On the list are also shirts without sleeves (forget tank tops), food that’s been frozen, opening the refrigerator at a house you don’t live in, baseball, the phrase “it’s just business,” bug spray, and returning things to stores. I’ve spent most of my conscious life begging for Froot Loops or Pop-Tarts. Any and all breakfast foods, really. My big rebellion is s

neaking a McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin with Ivy.

“You know that you’ve been here just as long as you lived in Argentina,” I remind her, math that’s only recently occurred to me. “Plus we’ve all got that blue passport. So, ya know. American. Through and through.”

“Passports are a piece of paper. The heart . . . that’s different. It gets minted in place.” Her English is impeccable, but her intonation singsongs like she’s running every phrase through an Argentina filter, her tone lilting. She adds, “Jaime, querido, decime what you want for lunch.”

Although she’s decidedly anti-breakfast, no one should make the mistake of thinking that my mom doesn’t care about feeding us. Every morning she spends at least half an hour apportioning and repurposing whatever leftovers she brought home from the restaurant the night before, based on the complex and shifting set of wants of us all so that we can all have a sensational midday meal. She always remembers who likes what each week—lobster rolls for Jaime after a family trip to Maine, and broccoli with a special sauce when Lucesita briefly dabbled in vegetarianism. I was the only kid in third grade who routinely brought a lunch box full of empanadas and papas rellenas that everyone wanted to trade for.

Jaime’s placing his order for today when my dad shuffles into the kitchen still wearing his pajamas, an espresso in one hand and a Red Bull in the other. He can officially be considered a part of the Not a Morning Person club.

“Who turned off the music?” he jokes, setting down the Red Bull to put a hand on Luz’s shoulder.

My mom frowns, studies his bedclothes. “You didn’t leave for Restaurant Depot yet?”

“Ya voy, mi amor. I’m headed that way.”

“Nicolas, Route Eighteen is going to be a parking lot.” She used to sound like a human checklist, full of useful reminders for him. But now her instructions have taken on a new tone and she seems more like a cattle prod trying to stir flesh to life.

“We need the backup vegetables,” she reminds him. “And don’t forget cups. I swear they put them in the oven to melt them. Oh, and pastry bags, and the little ramekins . . . Those are running low again, somehow.”

“And carafes,” I add gently. I don’t want to pile more on him, but two metal water carafes suffered catastrophic handle loss over the weekend, one dumping ice water all down the front of my black waitressing pants. And before that we were already running short.

“Carafes!” my mom agrees. “Thank you, Jules. Anything else?”

I rack my brain, not wanting to forget anything. I’d hate to be responsible for putting any extra stress on them when we don’t have some vital ingredient or tool in the middle of a dinner rush. “I think that’s it,” I say. “Unless you guys wanted to do any specials this week?”

The two of them exchange a look I don’t quite understand. Although I suspect it has something to do with how empty the restaurant has been lately. We’ve been recovering from the pandemic in fits and

starts. They’ve been trying everything: new menu items! Takeout cocktails! An impromptu patio we built in two feverish days out of marked-up Home Depot plywood. It’s been a lot, and the jury is still out on how much longer it’s going to be before the restaurant has fully recovered.

“No specials,” says my dad, weary and spent like it’s the end of the day and not the beginning. “Not this week.”

My mom’s lips tighten. “Nicolas—”

“We don’t need to run any specials,” he repeats, doing the espresso like a shot and then chasing it with the rest of his Red Bull as if he’s headed into battle, but reluctantly. “I’m going to get dressed.”

My mom watches him leave, bites the right side of her lower lip. Lucesita gets on tiptoes, stretches her fingers, trying to retrieve her bow from the top of the refrigerator; Jaime has drifted back to his game, oblivious to whatever is going on.

I don’t know what to say to my mom, who is now all a crackle of tension I can’t name. So I do what I always do when the world around me feels too uncertain, too intense.

I go up to my room, open my notebook, and begin to write.

Ivy always calls my writing “making up a world when you don’t want to be friends with the real one.” She’s pretty spot-on. I mean, I like the real one just fine, but there’s something extra-dimensional about the ones I imagine. As far as coping mechanisms go, it’s probably better than some of the alternatives. Anyway, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to escape into a world where they get to decide the weather, where everyone says and does what they say? When I’m writing, I can fiddle and fix until everything is perfect, no false starts or awkward silences.

“Julietita, querida!” My mom’s voice echoes up the stairs.

I glance at my phone. Somehow, an hour has blazed by. “Can you drop Luz at her lesson on your way into the restaurant?”

I sigh and close my notebook, finding my way back to this world, the one with its stubborn rules I don’t control. “Be right down!”