How many romances have you read this year featuring glow in the dark sharks?

4.5 stars

Maria Lopez runs a small niche blog where she imagines apocalyptic disaster scenarios and uses her comprehensive knowledge of science to figure out how to best try to avoid said scenarios. While it used to be just a hobby, and the blog wasn’t widely read, recently it’s getting a lot more visitors, and Maria has started getting actual job offers. She has kept her real identity closely guarded, so none of the people offering to hire her know that she’s a woman, working towards her actuary degree. Maria doesn’t really have a lot of friends or family around to support her. There’s her roommate Tina, who is also her best friend, there’s Angela, who’s sometimes more of a chore than a support to Maria, there’s her brother and there’s her grandmother. She’s cautious both professionally and emotionally, because she’s been badly hurt in the past.

Jay na Thalang is utterly driven, and he knows he’s a genius at what he does. He works hard, never slows down and expects the same kind of all-consuming passion for science from all those who work under him as well. He has a strained relationship with his parents, due to a tragedy in their past, and he barely has any friends, as they never seem to stick around once they realise he barely has time for them. Maria’s brother is one of the few people who has still stuck around, and he tries to set Maria and Jay up. It is an absolute disaster. Jay misunderstands why Maria is initially there, and has judged her and found her a frivolous airhead before she has a chance to even speak much. While they both find the other physically attractive, it’s pretty much hate at first sight.

What neither Maria nor Jay know, is that they already know each other. Jay is a huge fan of Maria’s apocalypse blog, and they’ve been exchanging messages for nearly a year. Messages that have gone from polite conversation to develop into friendship and possibly even something more. These conversations, where both are hidden behind Internet user names, continue to get more flirtatious, even as Jay and Maria keep running into each other in real life and fanning the flames of their animosity towards one another. Are they ever going to discover the truth?

The rest of my review can be found here. A link to Mrs. Julien’s most recommended Milan romances can be found here.