Grade 5.0
Take Bend It Like Beckham, amp up the sexual tension by a million, throw in a dash of sex and you have Kulti, a book about a female professional soccer player who has the dubious honor of learning just what it means to be careful what you wish for.
Where have you been all my adult reading life Mariana Zapata?! Also where the heck has this sub-genre been? Giant hot men playing with balls. OMG. I’m panting. Kulti may be THE hottest book I’ve read in a very long time. I’ve always had a soft spot for sports movies, which is hilarious because I can’t stand to watch sports. Now that I’ve discovered Kulti, and with it sports romance novels, I’m going down a new reading path and starting with Zapata because damn this woman knows how to pen well wrought characters.
Sal is a female soccer player who has the opportunity to be coached by her hero and teen idol Reiner Kulti. But the reality of the man is nowhere near the dream. He’s an aloof asshole who doesn’t seem to care about anything or anyone – not even soccer anymore. But Sal’s poor, kind, heart can’t seem to stop remembering the days of kissing his poster and wanting to know what has stopped someone like Kulti from loving the sport she adores.
Kulti is all about characters and the slow burn of sexual tension. I had no idea this book was a romance novel until 3/4 of the way through because Zapata comes into the romance genre a little differently in Kulti. Instead of writing a book where the characters are getting together the entire time as the central focus. Zapata is writing about what makes her characters tick, and it just happens to be that the characters find love while their lives are happening. This is kind of revolutionary to me, and yet that’s really how love works isn’t it?
The story is told through Sal. We see Sal struggling to find her place in soccer and with this new coach who she doesn’t know what to do with, and who from the start she can’t even talk to unless she’s thinking about him pooping (hilarious!). We see Kulti trying to pull his life together because soccer has given him so much, but taken so much away as well. We see a slow steady relationship build between the two and it’s just so sweet, and funny, and aggravating, and sexy, and perfect and…HOT.
OMG this book is so freaking HOT. I mean HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT! It’s the sexiest book I’ve read in a very long time. It’s foreplay on every page. Watching Kulti slowly come to terms with his love for Sal while she has no idea what’s going on, and then when everything finally comes together OMG. I don’t have enough caps to describe how hot this book is.
Kulti has made me into a serious Zapata fangirl. I can’t wait to go get her other books and see how they hold up.
Bottom Line: I never wanted this book to end. I wanted to stay with Sal and Kulti and be in their entourage until the day we all died together watching their perfect soccer babies.
Audible Review: Perfect reader. I don’t like to listen to romance novels because someone reading me sex is creepy, but this was all fine.
Cybil Solyn
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