Sweetest Taboo (Márquez)

Isabel Cruz was fifteen years old when she met Tom Stevens. She was 15 when they started dating, and 16 when she lost her virginity to him. By the time she turned 18 and went to college, everything had fallen apart. This hadn't been an ordinary love, though. Not a love between two dear friends, or even high school sweethearts. This had been the most taboo sort of love there was: a relationship between a student and her teacher. Isabel started her high school career as a normal student, but set her sights on Tom Stevens as soon as she met him, and pursued him with an intense – and sometimes reckless – fascination. When he finally approached her after swim practice and told her that he shared her feelings, it was the start of a forbidden and dangerous relationship. Join Isabel as she makes her way through this dark love story, hiding from teachers, lying to her parents, and defying the authorities to make a life with the man she loves. Watch as she discovers the wonders of love and romance, and the terrible betrayal of jealous friends. And cry with her when she learns the hard truth about life and the people in her world. Sweetest Taboo is inspired by the true and tragic stories of students who fall in love with their teachers, and live with the hard truths of forbidden romances. In a world full of after-school specials on sexual predators, this touching book seeks a different path, casting both student and teacher in a gentle light, and showing that true love may lie at the base of even the most illicit romance.

Isabel thought her life was on track – she was doing well in college, moving quickly toward her future, and deciding who she wanted to be. Best of all, she'd reunited with Tom, the swim coach she had a secret affair with in high school. But it doesn't take long for her history – and his – to start catching up with them. When Isabel goes back to her college life, after spending a blissful summer reuniting with Tom, things take a dangerous turn. Isabel gets swept up in a relationship with a dark, mysterious professor, with whom she begins a covert love affair that could ruin everything she has rebuilt with Tom. Worse, she starts to hear rumors from friends back home - rumors about a teacher having affairs with students. And Tom seems to be at the center of the controversy. Will Isabel's instincts about what Tom's been up to during their time apart drive her farther away, or will she forgo her new romance to run to Tom's defense?