From Lukov with Love

I love From Lukov with Love. It's one of my favorite books from Mariana Zapata, a real page turner that gives me sleepless nights staying up reading. For starters – I love Dear Aaron and From Lukov with Love shows the future of Aaron & Ruby but in a way that gives updates on their life now rather than overshadow Jasmine and Ivan story.The book is set 4 years after Dear Aaron epilogue. They now have 2 kids and are expecting a 3rd. Ruby is still making Jasmine and now Ivan costumes. We got more details about their marriage – they eloped and are happy.Moving onto Jasmine. Jasmine was biracial, half-filipino, and a figure skater in her 20s with a learning disability. She was a strong-willed character who knew who she was and what she wanted. However she has like most people, a desire for their parents acceptance. She didn't feel seen by her dad, and she didn't feel accepted, her dreams conflicted with his idea of success. That was something I believe a lot of people can relate to. Who you are versus who your parents want you to be can be at odds and decisions you make can be decisions they dislike but Jasmine never gave up, she fought for her dream and stayed true to her sense of self. Rather than please others, she lived her life for her and not for other people approval.Going back to Dear Aaron briefly, that’s where Ruby and Jasmine were different. Ruby was a people pleaser, but she started to change that and stand up for herself. She became her own person whereas Jasmine has always been her own. I liked how it doesn't pay out to please others and sacrifice your own happiness but it’s better to be true to your authentic self.Back to Jasmine, aside from admiring her for staying true to herself, I also admired her kindness in helping others when bullied. Although she was a strong character, she appeared to have a hard time being vulnerable and expressing her feelings. She tended to bottle them up and then they explode however with Ivan, she slowly opened up to him and confided in him. She also didn't like others helping her or taking care of her.Ivan was incredibly sweet. He had a lot of good qualities. He loved and cared for rescues. He defended her before she even knew he liked her, and he cared about her for as long as he knew her as a friend of the family. He was relatable. He was a homebody who preferred it because he didn't liked to be watched and talked about (who does?). Besides that he was supportive and affectionate. He talked about his feelings, allowed himself to be vulnerable. He had no problem expressing himself. He was observant - noticed Jasmine had a learning disability and when she had rough days, knew she liked Hershey kisses and would offer them to her when she was low. He took care of her when she was sick, by her side offering support when needed, and comforting her when upset. He was a good friend and love interest for Jasmine. He balanced her out. His speech at the end of the book when he told her he loved was so sweet - how she can have 10 other people as her favorite but she'll always be his favorite person. Sa-woon.Finally my favorite scene of the book is when Ivan comforts Jasmine after she confides she doesn't feel like she's enough, that she's not good enough but Ivan comforts her and tells her she is enough and always will be. Jasmine feelings like she couldn't keep her parents together is common in divorced kids. My parents divorced and I blamed myself for a long time. All in all, 5 stars. I love Mariana Zapata books for the character development, romance, and relatable characters and experiences. Bravo!

There is no one who does slow burn better than Mariana Zapata. At this point I'm just stating facts, honestly.I loved this book soooo much I feel like I can't even put into words how happy this book made me feel. Right now I have the biggest grin on my face and my heart feels full, like when you finish the best love story and you just know that they're going to be happy together for the rest of their lives. It's how I feel about Jasmine and Ivan. Because if there were ever two people who were meant to be, it's those two.I love that this was a enemies to friends to lovers romance but I loved even more was how they pretty much weren't enemies at all but it was all foreplay to what everyone could see but Jasmine. I won't even say Ivan because it feels clear to me that from the very beginning, Ivan has been interested in Jasmine and she was the only one clueless to his affections towards her. And that fact that he's been waiting around for her for freaking YEARS makes me love him so much but also makes their romance feel that much more soulmate worthy.I loved pretty much everything about this book but I especially loved Jasmine. I love how perfectly imperfect she is. I love how she is so unapologetically herself and how many would call her an unlikable heroine and she wouldn't give a hoot about it. She is who she is and she never apologizes for it and I loved that about her sooo much. She has worked so freaking hard for her dream, it honestly hurt me that she she kept failing while everyone else around her was succeeding. But what is so great about Jasmine is that she NEVER gives up, not on herself and not on the things that really matter. This book was very much centered on Jasmine's journey as a ice skater and as a person; I would even go as far as saying it was about her journey first, and the romance second.Though as a side note, that one sex scene we got was SO. FREAKING. HOT.Like seriously, hot.Their chemistry was off the charts and that one scene alone made me wish on all the stars in the sky that Mariana would have more sexy times in her books because hot DAMN.So if I loved this book so freaking much, why only 4 stars? Well there were a few things that bothered me:1. I felt like the writing at certain points was a bit awkward and confusing. For example, many times throughout the book she would say things like "the woman standing next to me said," or "my mom's fourth husband said" and it was just so...weird? We know their names, she literally said them one line before so why did she have to keep referring to them through this characterization quirk? (I don't even know if that is a thing or if it makes sense but I'm going with it for now). It became annoying after a while because I just wanted to shout, "JUST CALL THEM BY THEIR DAMN NAME ALREADY" and at one point in the beginning when she'd done it with their Coach Lee I was genuinely confused when she'd refer to her as "the other woman standing next to me" because I thought maybe I'd missed something and there was more than one coach in the room and I had to keep rereading the paragraph or page over.2. I feel like I complain about this all the time but while I love how she's so amazing at the slow burn, I feel like she forget that she needs to actually show us them as a couple. Don't get me wrong, I felt their connection and could feel that they'd be perfect together as a couple and they'd last for the long haul but once more it took until 95% for them to actually get together and that didn't really leave much room to show us them together as a couple. And I don't know if it's just a me thing, but while I want the slow burn, I also want the satisfaction of seeing them date and be a couple too. I feel like it gets tricky in this book because technically even though they weren't together and Jasmine was acting oblivious to what was in front of her, they were pretty much acting like a couple for the last quarter-ish of the book. I knew that Ivan was in love with her well before he admitted it and I knew that she had feelings for him too even if she hadn't realized it yet, but I wanted to see them be together longer than half a chapter. I'm not trying to be harsh or mean but it's clear that the author has a formula that has worked very well for her in the past. Hell, her next five books could follow the same formula of: slow burn to the max and then last five precent showing them finally admit their feelings and I'd still buy every single one of them. But at the same time, it's going to get old. And just because something has worked for you before doesn't mean you shouldn't grow as a writer and try new things. I'm not saying she needs to stop doing what she's doing because I love her for it so much but I'm saying maybe tweak it or throw in a curveball or two to keep us readers on our toes every once in a while.3. And my final complaint would be that I felt like the writing was drawn out. It's not that I didn't love it and I wasn't completely hooked from beginning to end, because I was. But when I was reading, she would take three pages to say one thing and I got the distinct feeling she was just being wordy to be wordy. For example, I didn't need 3-4 pages of inner dialogue about how she was sad that her mom was sad, especially when it felt like it was in a constant loop of the same thing being said four different ways. This kind of ties into my point two where you could've used those extra words/pages or whatever to show us them as a couple instead of feeling like you needed to draw things out for the simple fact that it's kind of what you're known for. Again I don't mean this in a catty or nasty way because I genuinely love this author and her writing so freaking much it's not even funny. But it was just the impression I got a few times while reading.But besides those three things, I absolutely loved this book and felt like I went through the best freaking journey with these characters. Mariana Zapata is easily one of my favorite authors and I love that I can count on her to make me fall so in love with her books, no matter what. I also want to point out that I love her immensely for always having diversity in her books; she is one of the few romance authors that I can say that has multiple books with WOC heroines and I love that she consistently gives it to us. Not only that but she gives diversity in so many other aspects to, like in the topics covered in her books. Her characters are not one dimensional and they very much feel like real people, people who I could know and be friends with. Overall, if you are a fan of this author's previous books you will 100% love this book so hardcore. And if you haven't read anything by her yet you need to jump on the Zapata train and pick up this book asap.

There were rears, sight, laughs and so much more! This was perfect, I loved them, their story is beautiful. I would have love to see Ivan’s POV but this was so good!

Fiquei presa na história do início ao fim. Li tudo em uma noite, por não conseguir largar o livro. É bom demais!!! O slow burn que eu estava esperando não foi arrastado nem forçado, foi natural e divertido, o que me impressionou. Queria saber mais sobre a visão do Ivan quando ele inicialmente convida a Jas pra ser sua parceira, de acordo com o que ele fala no fim do livro... E senti falta daqueles dois-quase-três meses que são pulados na história, acho que é bem irreal pensar que a dinâmica dos dois estancou e se manteve naquele mesmo patamar nesse período. Mas de qualquer forma amei muito o livro, e estou sonhando acordada com esses dois.

Ha llegado en perfecto estado.Slow burn muy bonito aunque siento que no llegó a desarrollarse del todo. Muy fácil para leer en inglés, se lee rápido.

I blinked every time there was a blink written in this book. Good eye excercise 😂😂It was a very nice novel. good feel novel

Achat pour un cadeau.La lectrice a adoré !