REVIEW: Racing the Sun by Karina Halle

In Racing the Sun by Karina Halle, Leave it to Amber MacLean to run out of money while backpacking abroad. She’s been all over the world and is currently trekking across Europe but can’t find it in herself to give in and call her parents to rescue her. So she starts looking for a job. But for someone who speaks very little Italian and with an English degree under her belt, there’s not much in the way of jobs on the coast of southern Italy. That is, until she finds an ad for someone to teach English to a couple of children on the island of Capri. What could it hurt to check it out?

‘I want him to overcome his issues, his dark demons, and of course I would foolishly hope that I could help him do that. Isn’t that what every woman wants? To heal the bad boy?’

Amber is a bit freaked out from the start when she meets Felisa, the tough-as-nails nanny. She takes Amber to meet the children and their guardian, their older brother Desiderio Larosa, who is extremely intimidating. The whole house itself has an air of grief about it, and once Amber learns of Derio’s parent’s unfortunate accident and his own harrowing past, she knows she wants to help him. But she wasn’t expecting to get swept away in her steamy feelings for the reclusive bad boy. Or to become overwhelmed with how invested she is in the lives of his siblings as well.

“I need to know if I can feel anything. I want to feel something.”
There’s a quiet desperation in his voice. It makes me ache for him. Then he leans in and kisses me.
…”Did you feel anything?” I ask softly, hopefully.
He shakes his head ever so slightly, his forehead damp against mine. “No,” he murmurs. “I felt everything.”

Racing the Sun is another incredible novel from Karina Halle that whisks us away to a beautiful location, in this case, the island of Capri. Passion and drama filled our character’s days and nights as they began to let down their guard and trust their emotions.

“Ti amo. Hai conquistato il mio cuore.” — “I love you. You have conquered my heart.”

I know going into a Karina Halle story that it will be emotionally-charged and it will put me through the ringer right along with the characters. With Amber and Derio, I could feel how difficult is was for them to work together where they were strangers but they also had a spark of attraction that was relentless. Their situation was pretty unique and the grief Derio, Annabella and Alfonso were still struggling with over the loss of their parents made it that much more intense for everyone involved.

I connected easily with Amber from the start. She was fairly down-to-earth and everything about her just seemed real to me. She knew her issues and was trying to improve her life. Bad boy Derio I wasn’t so sure of, though. He was so brooding and his moods shifted rather quickly. Learning about his tragic past explained a lot of it. And once he opened up to Amber and they pursued their attraction, I fell for Derio bigtime. They were both very caring people, but Derio had a way about him, saying the most romantic, passionate things to Amber. Especially when he called her ‘mia leonessa’ or ‘my lioness’, thanks to her wild and crazy curly hair. *swoon*

With heartfelt storytelling and a wonderful cast of realistic characters, Racing the Sun is a romance that will be sure to capture your heart. This is a must-have for your beach reading list.

Book Info:

 July 28th 2015 | by Atria Books |

From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Where Sea Meets Sky comes a new adult novel about a young woman who becomes a nanny in Capri and falls for her charges’ bad-boy brother.

It’s time for twenty-four-year-old Amber MacLean to face the music. After a frivolous six months of backpacking through New Zealand, Australia, and Southeast Asia, she finds herself broke on the Mediterranean without enough money for a plane ticket home to California. There are worse places to be stuck than the gorgeous coastline of southern Italy, but the only job she manages to secure involves teaching English to two of the brattiest children she’s ever met.

It doesn’t help that the children are under the care of their brooding older brother, Italian ex-motorcycle racer Desiderio Larosa. Darkly handsome and oh-so-mysterious, Derio tests Amber’s patience and will at every turn—not to mention her hormones.

But when her position as teacher turns into one as full-time nanny at the crumbling old villa, Amber finds herself growing closer to the enigmatic recluse and soon has to choose between the safety of her life back in the States and the uncertainty of Derio’s closely guarded heart.