My name is Isabel Cruz, and I’m nineteen years old, almost twenty. I go to Lincoln University where I’m majoring in English. I’m a straight-A student, and I know what I’m doing with my life, but things weren’t always that way. Or rather, I’ve always known what I wanted, and it just hasn’t always gone along with society’s views. In high school, I had an affair with my swim coach. I wanted him, and I took what I wanted. We were together until I graduated, but he had a wife and kids, and I left him behind to come here. I left everything behind to come here. At least that’s what I thought.”
Isabel was never like the other girls at her school in the sleepy town of Hillside, California. At sixteen she fell in love with Tom, a married swim coach at Royal Oaks High School; their exhilarating and sultry affair continuing in secret for several years. Finally, Isabel realized that her own future had to come first, but even after relocating to Washington, D.C. to study at Lincoln University, she finds herself still wracked by guilt over jeopardizing the happiness and security of Tom’s young family. Now almost in her twenties and desperate to start a new chapter in her life, free from past controversies, Isabel will once again find that her beauty and precociousness will captivate another older man, this time a professor at her university. Confronted by this burgeoning affair, Isabel realizes just how deeply she still loves Tom and, in spite of the disapproval of her hometown community, her feelings become too strong to deny.
When Isabel returns to Hillside, reunited with Tom, she feels herself falling for him all over again, only this time with the tantalizing promise that things could really work out for them, especially since she is no longer the naive teen she used to be. But all is not as it seems; Isabel begins to hear rumors about Tom’s involvement with other girls at Royal Oaks High. Quickly this salacious gossip leaks to the local media and the authorities begin to investigate the claims. Only then does the true gravity of Isabel’s misguided choices begin to profoundly affect those around her and threaten to derail her life completely.
Tainted Love is the thrilling follow up to Sweetest Taboo by Eva Marquez, and rejoins Isabel Cruz as she tries to put her complex and forbidden romance with Tom behind her. Written from the perspectives of both Isabel and Tom, the irrational and desperate love they share is brought to vivid life by Marquez. Inspired by the conviction of one of her former high school teachers for sexual misconduct with a minor, it addresses a poignant modern taboo, one that is becoming increasingly common in the US, with unnerving insight and precision. Tainted Love is a must read for young adults, their parents and all fans of romantic fiction.
Isabel was never like the other girls at her school in the sleepy town of Hillside, California. At sixteen she fell in love with Tom, a married swim coach at Royal Oaks High School; their exhilarating and sultry affair continuing in secret for several years. Finally, Isabel realized that her own future had to come first, but even after relocating to Washington, D.C. to study at Lincoln University, she finds herself still wracked by guilt over jeopardizing the happiness and security of Tom’s young family. Now almost in her twenties and desperate to start a new chapter in her life, free from past controversies, Isabel will once again find that her beauty and precociousness will captivate another older man, this time a professor at her university. Confronted by this burgeoning affair, Isabel realizes just how deeply she still loves Tom and, in spite of the disapproval of her hometown community, her feelings become too strong to deny.
When Isabel returns to Hillside, reunited with Tom, she feels herself falling for him all over again, only this time with the tantalizing promise that things could really work out for them, especially since she is no longer the naive teen she used to be. But all is not as it seems; Isabel begins to hear rumors about Tom’s involvement with other girls at Royal Oaks High. Quickly this salacious gossip leaks to the local media and the authorities begin to investigate the claims. Only then does the true gravity of Isabel’s misguided choices begin to profoundly affect those around her and threaten to derail her life completely.
Tainted Love is the thrilling follow up to Sweetest Taboo by Eva Marquez, and rejoins Isabel Cruz as she tries to put her complex and forbidden romance with Tom behind her. Written from the perspectives of both Isabel and Tom, the irrational and desperate love they share is brought to vivid life by Marquez. Inspired by the conviction of one of her former high school teachers for sexual misconduct with a minor, it addresses a poignant modern taboo, one that is becoming increasingly common in the US, with unnerving insight and precision. Tainted Love is a must read for young adults, their parents and all fans of romantic fiction.
Review
****This book was part of a blog tour, I was given a copy for my honest review****This book did not go as I expected to. Following on from the blurb I thought that Isabel would be sucked into the relationship again, falling back into an old pattern. The blurb leads you to believe that Tom goes behind Izzy's back with some other students. If you had read the previous book you would know that him doing this would completely undermine what they had as a relationship.
The tone of this book starts things off totally differently. For one we start off with a preface from Tom's point of view
"Have you ever really been in love? I am not talking about infatuation, co- dependency, or being with someone for such a long time that you feel used to him or her, so used to them that you wouldn't know how to live without that person. I am talking about the type of love that you know, that you feel in every fiber of your being, a feeling of comfort of being at home in the arms of that person, knowing that even if you never saw him or her again, you would continue to love them unconditionally with all your heart for the rest of your life?"
You start to see Tom very differently from the seedy, student nabbing teacher in the first book, to a very sad man, living a disappointing life who falls in love with a beautiful girl.We get more information into his relationship with his wife. I started to feel sorry for Tom, who's character was starting to seem more of a pushover than a pursuer.
Izzy's character in this book disgusted me on many levels, she just loved to make excuses for her own irresponsible behaviour. Their relationship barely had a chance to begin because of her. Now I have to ask myself,why would I want this relationship to go any further? I simply don't know, but in this book I was mad at Izzy and her mistreatment of a man that she professes to love, yet has no qualms walking all over and leaving behind to face a storm on his own.
At the end of this book I was ready to kill Izzy, to me she has no redeemable qualities whatsoever. However there is more to this story, another whole book!!! I am intrigued as to where this story will go.
Does this couple have a chance at happiness? Or has the circumstances of their relationships origins tainted everything ?
I honestly cannot say I enjoyed this installment of this story at all. It was irritating, aggravating, lies, cheating, miscommunication and characters sticking their noses into it, making everything worse.It ended I feel a horrible melancholy, something I don't like feeling when ending a book. Knowing I have to wait for the next installment just aggravates me more. But I finished it and it did provoke emotions from me, so I had to have been engaged in the story and drawn in enough to feel for the characters. For that I will give it a 2.5 star rating, I just don't know if I would have put myself through this emotional wringer if I had known the outcome.
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