Kulti by Mariana Zapata Published by Tantor Audio on July 28th 2015
Narrator: Callie Dalton
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“Trust me, I’ve wanted to punch you in the face a time or five.”
When the man you worshipped as a kid becomes your coach, it’s supposed to be the greatest thing in the world. Keywords: supposed to.
It didn’t take a week for twenty-seven-year-old Sal Casillas to wonder what she’d seen in the international soccer icon—why she’d ever had his posters on her wall, or ever envisioned marrying him and having super-playing soccer babies.
Sal had long ago gotten over the worst non-break-up in the history of imaginary relationships with a man that hadn’t known she’d existed. So she isn’t prepared for this version of Reiner Kulti who shows up to her team’s season: a quiet, reclusive shadow of the explosive, passionate man he’d once been.
Nothing could have prepared her for the man she got to know.
Or the murderous urges he brought out in her.
This was going to be the longest season of her life.
This book! I’m still floored. Truth: I’ve wanted to read Kulti for quite some time, but I was put off by the long length. I finally caved when I discovered I could borrow the audio book from the library—16 hours worth of narration. I’m not gonna lie. Kulti has a detailed storyline that unfolds at an extremely leisurely pace. However, it’s totally absorbing. My only regret is waiting so long to read this!
I have a weakness for sport romances, even though I’m not a huge sports fan in real life. This is probably the sportiest (Is that even a word apart from the Spice Girls?) book I’ve read. It has the reader deeply immersed in the world of professional women’s soccer, and boy do I have mad respect for those athletes now. Sal is my new role model. She’s disciplined, hard working, generous, and so incredibly sweet and forgiving.
Kulti is one of those characters that you initially hate, which makes his transformation all the more enjoyable. He’s complex, and bit by bit more layers are revealed. By the end I was utterly, completely, and irrevocably in love with him.
The banter and name-calling between Sal and Kulti had me laughing out loud. This story is the very epitome of slow burn, but their friendship is believable and the payoff is exceptionally satisfying. Even the supporting characters are wonderfully developed. An honorable mention goes to Sal’s hilarious father. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this book.
About Mariana Zapata
Mariana Zapata began writing love stories soon after she learned how to spell. She probably shouldn’t admit that she started sneaking romance novels from her aunt’s bookshelves way before she was old enough to even understand what it meant when a man flipped up a woman’s skirt… don’t tell her mom. Luckily, she stuck to stories about princesses and princes for a while.
In her teens, she wrote boy band fanfiction (there’s still a website up somewhere on the internet with those masterpieces), and in her early twenties, she picked it back up again with Sookie Stackhouse and Twilight. Eventually, her significant other finally told her to do what she wanted to do and she began working on her original work. Her novels tend to include potty humor, bodily functions, and bad words.
Mariana lives in a small town called Pagosa Springs, Colorado with her husband/best friend, Chris Letchford, and their two well-beloved (and emotionally manipulative) Great Dane children, Dorian and Kaiser. When she’s not pretending to write, she’s reading sci-fi, fantasy, steampunk or historical romance novels. You can usually find her harassing her dogs, being a hermit at home or cracking jokes at the expense of her family members.
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