Craving U

"You can't run away from what you are. No matter where you go, your feelings are going to follow you...."

Craving U is a young adult novel about first loves, friendship and life-changing moments, an emotional whirlwind of passion, torment, expectations and doubts, dreams and love: gentle but reckless young love, a love made up of exclusive, overpowering feelings, a totalizing emotion, complete in and of itself, that turns your legs to jelly and leaves you breathless, driving your heart to pound out of bounds.

Marika, a teenager from the countryside, has known Matt since they were toddlers... and has been in love with him for almost as long. But while he's a gorgeous, athletic, popular guy with sky-blue eyes and a smile that makes your mind go blank and your mouth go dry, she is just like so many other girls her age: uncomfortable about her looks and her weight - neither super-skinny nor blonde like the cheerleader types - and certain that Matteo is out of her league.

They have grown up with very few cares in the world in the midst of vineyards in the rolling Berici Hills, rocked gently by the rhythms of school and friends. But hundreds of miles away in the big city, in an elegant old building downtown, their destiny is about to be changed from behind a luxurious mahogany desk. Matteo's departure for Milan to follow his dreams will throw everything off balance, thrusting new, tempting situations into these two teenagers' experiences of life: unexplored worlds of pro sports and its opportunities and sacrifices, contracts and huge paychecks, symphonic metal, emotions, teenage trials and tribulations, awkward relationships, and memories as cutting as a sword slicing through tofu.

When another guy fills that emptiness in Marika's life, every move, every thought, every feeling gets amplified and everything gets more complicated, and more intense.

Craving U is the book 1 of The Rook Café series, but can also be read as a standalone. A contemporary coming-of-age novel with emotional ups and downs, a romantic and addictive story for readers looking for intense, consuming true love.