Carla De Guzman

Martha Aguas kind of has it all–she’s an accountant who loves numbers, an accident-prone puppy that loves her, and the perfect wardrobe.

Yes, she wears a dress size 24, her bras don’t fit and she’s never had a boyfriend, but so what?

It becomes a big deal when her perfect cousin Regina announces her engagement to Enzo, the only boy she’s ever loved (he doesn’t know, so don’t tell him!) Suddenly Aguases from all corners of the globe are coming for the event, and the last thing Martha wants is to be asked why she still prefers her lattes with a waffle on the side.

Thank god for Max. Goofy, funny, dependable Max, who finds himself playing the fake boyfriend at the family festivities. But why does it feel like only one of them is pretending?

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Martha won my heart from the first page. Here is a girl who is strong, smart, efficient (favorite), warm and loving. Who is able to look a hefty serving of freshly cooked fries in the face and think “I want you,” and feel no shame. She loves her body, and despite moments wherein her confidence wavers, she owns it, and she knows she doesn’t need to be a size zero to look amazing.  And then there’s Max, her hot, bookish veterinarian best friend. If those words strung together are not enough to get you, know that he is sweet and wonderful and he cares for Martha the way she needs to be cared for. He is protective of her without the machismo. He sees through her and calls her out when she’s a little less honest with herself. But not all the time, though, and not in all the ways that matter, cos otherwise we won’t have the delicious conflict and the tightly strung tension between them.

Then there’s Enzo, the teenage dream, the theater crush. I kind of had a wall up against him from the get go (maybe because we’ve been hurt by theater crushes a lot these days hehe), but I learned to like him in all his imperfect glory.

I loved the titas, the dog, the cousin, the mom and dad and the sister, even the office people. I wish I got to know Regina a bit more, why she turned around the way she did. But it’s okay. At times, the number of the supporting characters made me feel like I was a stranger thrown into a friend’s family dinner party, and introduced to the lot of them all in one night. But they were a lovely, crazy bunch. And it was easy to pick out things that I myself would hear in my own family dinners. (This, by the way, fortified my belief that there really is a Pinoy tita/lola code somewhere. Where is that code book? Maybe let’s burn it hehe)

Read it because it’s a heart-warming story brimming with girl power and body positivity without being weighed down by angst. Read it because Max is lovely and he quotes Mr. Darcy. And because Martha is the kind of girl you’d instantly root for, and she makes it easier for you to do so because she fights for her own happiness.

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Get your ebook on Amazon, and paperback on Feels Fest!

The Backlist Revival Project is a fresh initiative to bring life to #romanceclass books that have been around for a while. For the month of March, the project features Cities, the debut book of multitalented, exceedingly artistic author Carla de Guzman.

Celia has dreams.
She dreams of going to Seoul for that scholarship she never took, of leaving everything behind and moving to New York.
In all those dreams, she finds herself attached to Benedict, the boy she has always loved, who didn’t love her back.

Ben believes in parallel worlds.
Worlds where the things you didn’t do come true—worlds where he went to London and fell in love with Celia, where he shows up on the day she needed him most. He believes that dreams are glimpses into that parallel world, and it’s not a coincidence that Celia’s been having them too.

It’s the day of Ben’s wedding, in the middle of a typhoon in Manila. How will these dreams and unmade decisions change their lives? Will they bring them closer together, or just drive them further apart?

What if all the ‘what ifs’ you ever had actually existed in different planes and you’re just not aware of it? What if in this reality, he loved someone else, while in the other, he loved you back?

De Guzman’s Cities is rooted on this intriguing premise, of multiverses that exist next to each other, of multiple lives one person could be living in different planes of existence. It felt very abstract to me, and at times I found myself being stopped by thoughts that go ‘wait—what?’ But a few pages in, I decided to stop overanalyzing everything and just settle into enjoying each story.

Celia, Ben, Vivian and Henry have loved each other in many different ways, and in different permutations. In each of the three cities, their love stories start differently, progress differently, and conclude with scenes that shift in abrupt takes, much like rapid blinks of the eyes in dreams. Seoul is fun, flirty and swift, propelled by the urgency of young love and the classic obstacle of rich-man-loves-common-spunky-woman. London is a slower, more potent brew of friends and flings. New York is brisk too, but there is a level of comfort there, a warmth against the big city’s inherent zing; even the lines of conflict felt familiar. But Manila is where it all begins and ends, on a wedding day that defied a storm.

Cities does not try to answer the ‘what ifs?’, but instead tries to explore one after another. Each city provides a colorful backdrop that sets a unique tone to each multiverse. I would have wanted a more consistent POV—the head-hopping jars me out of the narrative at times—but De Guzman’s prose is friendly, and the depth of her imagination pushed me out of the safe borders of my reality. Read it, and like Celia, maybe you too will be consumed by the question: what if in another universe, you loved me too?

About the author

Carla de Guzman had horrible handwriting as a kid. That didn’t stop her from writing, though. Riddled with sleep apnea and a vivid imagination, she started writing every midnight. She grew up with her toes in the sand and her bags packed and ready to go on adventures. These books are chronicles of her journeys, with a silly love story mixed in.