Passion Scrawled Across Skies

Passion Scrawled Across Skies

Romance · 352 pages · Published 2024-02-13 · Avg 3.5★ (6 reviews)

Aging and reclusive skywriting legend Alma Serrano is finally ready to tell the truth about the wild blue-scripted messages that once trailed behind her planes. But when she chooses unknown weather columnist Lila Moreno to record her confession, no one is more stunned than Lila herself. Why her? Why now? Lila is not exactly steady on her feet. Her husband has moved out, her Orlando apartment smells faintly of printer ink, and her bylines are buried on page nine. Whatever Alma's reasons, Lila is determined to climb out of the doldrums on the lift of this story.

Summoned to a glass-walled penthouse above Biscayne Bay, Lila listens, rapt, as Alma unspools a life in tin film canisters and wind-battered logbooks. From slipping out of Madrid in 1961 with a duffel and a toolkit to painting hearts over Lisbon, Jaipur, and Santa Monica from the cockpit of a battered biplane, Alma fell in love exactly once—with a brilliant Cuban astronomer named Rafael Cordero whose wedding band was a barrier the sky could not erase. Between fuel shortages, federal fines, and a rival pilot who became her fiercest friend, Alma's ambition left contrails over every city she touched. As the last reels click, Lila feels the pull of a love story written in vapor, until Alma's final loop reveals how a dawn stunt over Key West ended in a fall of burning fabric that changed Lila's family forever—binding their lives in a way neither woman can undo.

Barrett, Carla is a Texas-born romance writer whose work blends weather, wanderlust, and the messy, luminous business of the heart. Raised in Corpus Christi, she studied atmospheric science at Florida State University and spent nearly a decade as a weather producer in Orlando before earning an MFA in creative writing from the University of Central Florida. Her short fiction has appeared in regional journals, and she was a finalist for a national romance award in 2016. She teaches community workshops, mentors first-generation writers, and volunteers with SKYWARN. Barrett lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, with a rescue greyhound and an ever-growing collection of vintage pilot logbooks.

Ratings & Reviews

Darius P. Nolan
2025-08-19

This should have soared. Instead it taxis, circles, and rarely clears the clouds.

I kept thinking of Amaya Calderón's Coral Routes, which finds propulsion in confession, and D. J. McCaskill's The Weather Desk, which turns meteorological detail into human stakes. This novel nods at both, but the engine keeps coughing.

Alma's monologues are treated like sacred transcripts, yet they sprawl, and Lila's arc feels reactive. I get the point of restraint, but tension bleeds out when every revelation is couched in another anecdote about permits and fines.

The metaphors stack up until they feel like fog: beautiful at first, then blinding. And the Key West stunt hangs over everything so long that the eventual clarity lands with a thud rather than a shock.

I needed storms, not drizzle, and for me the story never finds the updraft it promises.

Carmen Whitlow
2025-05-07

Mixed feelings, so here's the ledger.

  • High-concept premise with skywriting confession
  • Scenes in the penthouse crackle
  • Midsection sags during travel recounting
  • Final reveal ties threads but arrives a beat late
Javier Cortés
2025-02-20

Más que una historia de amor, esto lee como un mapa aéreo. Madrid, Lisboa, Jaipur, Santa Monica, Key West, y ese penthouse sobre la Bahía de Biscayne se sienten precisos sin volverse guía turística. Me gustó cómo los reglamentos, las multas y el combustible condicionan cada vuelo, como si el mundo físico empujara a las emociones.

A veces el paisaje desplaza la tensión y la crónica pierde altitud, pero la atmósfera salina y el zumbido del biplano valen el viaje.

Alina Moretti
2024-11-09

Underneath the aviation lore sits a meditation on truth and visibility. Alma writes her life in air, only to admit how vapor fades, and Lila learns what it costs to publish what others would bury. The book keeps returning to the idea of messages as both love letters and warnings, those "wild blue-scripted messages" that thrill a crowd while hiding a bruise. It's tender about limits, honest about harm, and still curious about who gets to draw the sky.

Marcus Yeoh
2024-06-15

Alma's flinty bravado and Lila's wobbly resolve meet in conversations that crackle, making the forbidden orbit around Rafael feel both inevitable and unsolvable.

Renee Dalrymple
2024-03-02

Structured as a series of interviews layered with found artifacts, the book balances Lila's tentative voice against Alma's crisp recollections. The archival reels and logbooks counterpoint Lila's present-day notes; the rhythm steadies as Alma's timeline tightens. Some metaphors lean heavy on cloud and weather, yet the prose glints when machines, bodies, and sky interact. By the end, the confession feels earned without turning into spectacle.

Generated on 2025-09-01 09:06 UTC