Excerpt from THE HUNDRED LOVES OF JULIET!
An extended sneak peek that you can't get anywhere else (way longer than bookstore previews online!)
“For anyone who’s ever swooned over Romeo and Juliet: this novel cleverly imagines the epilogue the lovers didn’t get to have, and how curses can be blessings in disguise.”
—Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author
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"The Hundred Loves of Juliet is romantic, realistic, and fanciful, a love-for-all-times story. I couldn’t put this book down and I really wanted Helene and Sebastien to have a happy ending. . . and I’ll just say I was very surprised!
—Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of All the Days of Summer
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"Fresh, magical and hopelessly romantic, Evelyn Skye's The Hundred Loves of Juliet is a book for lovers. I was swept away. It's an atmospheric, tug-at-your-heartstrings winner, showing us that true love never dies."
—Sarah Addison Allen, New York Times bestselling author of Other Birds
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“A rare and charming retelling that asks the question: what if Romeo and Juliet had another chance? What if they had a hundred? The Hundred Loves of Juliet is a celebration of life as it comes, and love as we find it.”
—Ashley Poston, New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics
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"Beautifully spun and achingly romantic, a gorgeous reimagining that is every bit as hopeful as it is haunting. I have never loved Romeo and Juliet more."
—M. A. Kuzniar, Sunday Times bestselling author
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"Evelyn Skye expertly crafts the story of Romeo and Juliet into a moving romance that explores what it means to love boldly in the face of tragedy and loss. Hopeful and triumphant, The Hundred Loves of Juliet is like a bright warm sunbeam in the form of a book, one you'll want to revisit again and again."
— Alyssa Wees, author of Nocturne
Excerpt from The Hundred Loves of Juliet
My publisher gave me special permission to share this sneak peek of the book with you, my wonderful newsletter subscribers!
I’m both excited and nervous for you to read… So without further ado:
HELENE
Alaska in January is a fairy tale, with frost-rimed branches glittering in the pale moonlight, like lace woven by a snow maiden. Icicles on rooftops twinkle like Christmas frozen in time, and I swear the spiraling snowflakes beckon to me as they fall. Fairy tale indeed. Or at least it’s a great first impression for my first evening here.
At thirty years old and after too many uninspiring years as an assignment reporter in the Los Angeles bureau of The Wall Street Journal, I’m finally chasing my dream of writing a novel. An actual book of my own! Not just telling other people’s stories. I’ve been jotting down short stories ever since I was a teenager—bits and pieces of a novel—and now I finally have time to figure out how it all comes together.
Truth be told, I need this. My recent past—hell, the last ten years—are best swept into a fire pit and doused with gasoline. The death of my two golden retrievers, one right after the other. My Pied Piper of a soon-to-be-ex-husband, who attracted interns and affairs like rats at cheese orgies. And my so-called best friend, who stole the promotion that was supposed to be mine.
However, she unwittingly did me a favor. If I’d been promoted to columnist, I wouldn’t have left. If she’d been a true friend, I’d still be stuck in a nowhere life, married to a no-good husband.
Instead, she betrayed me, and by doing so, she handed me the match I needed. I lit it and burned the past down, metaphorically speaking.
Goodbye, old Helene Janssen.
Hello, new and better me.
My mom always says that everything happens for a reason, and I obstinately hold fast to that belief. So when I saw super cheap plane tickets to Alaska (tourists don’t usually visit here in early January) plus an “artist’s cottage” for rent in a quaint fishing town, I saw it as a sign that this was where I was supposed to go to begin work on my novel, and my future. And I think I was right. Being here in this winter wonderland is already helping me feel better about my odds going forward.
I hum to myself as I lock the door on the cottage and head down the street in search of dinner. It’s only half past six, but it’s been dark for hours now, which will take some getting used to. So will walking through the snow in these clunky boots, although it’s better than driving. I’ve got a car stashed in the garage, but the trip this afternoon from the airport to the cottage was harrowing enough for one day. I’m used to driving down sunny, palm-tree-lined boulevards, and I don’t want to use up the rest of my daily allotment of luck on the icy streets of Ryba Harbor.
Luckily, my rental is only a few blocks from the picturesque downtown. On the corner, a cute, nautical-themed bookstore cozies up to a little souvenir shop for the few tourists who venture away (in summer) from Anchorage and Ketchikan. Wood smoke billows out of a barbecue place, scenting the air with brisket and ribs. There’s also a record store (I didn’t know they still existed, and the fact that they have one here delights me), several bakeries, and a coffee shop.
When I see a bar called The Frosty Otter, though, I know that is where I want to be on my first night in Ryba Harbor. It reminds me of a saloon from the Wild West, but with an Alaskan flair, the blue paint weathered by snow and salt from the roads. A wooden statue of a bearded fur trapper stands outside the door, rifle in one arm and beer stein in another, and ragtime piano music jangles from speakers inside.
Three flannel-clad lumberjack types charge amiably through the front door ahead of me, laughing at jokes in that deep-throated, belly-shaking way of people who’ve known one another for years. I slip in through the door behind them.
Inside, The Frosty Otter is everything I hoped it would be. Two-thirds of the tables are full, and the patrons are as eclectic as the decor. The lumberjacks go straight for the far corner to sit beneath a large mural of a grumpy-looking otter. Along the back wall, a cluster of older women who look like kindly grandmothers knit beneath faded twentieth-century advertisements boasting Wild Alaskan Salmon! The Klondike! and a cartoon of a giant king crab wearing a gilded crown (I think that might be my favorite). Most of the others here are men—probably those who work at the nearby seafood processing plant—but there are also a few families, the kids eating chicken fingers while Mom and Dad have a beer.
“Welcome to The Frosty Otter,” a spunky, white-haired waitress says. “You new around here?”
I laugh. “Is it that obvious?”
“Well, it’s a small town and I know everybody. Plus your hair is that pretty deep gold that happens when brown meets the sun. Unlike the rest of us pasty and vitamin D–deprived folk.” She winks. “I’m Betsy, owner of this joint. Sit anywhere you like, and I’ll bring ya your first drink on the house. What’ll you have?”
“A local beer, maybe a pale ale?”
“Comin’ right up.”
I find a smaller booth along the wall where I can see everyone in the room, and I slide onto its cracked pleather seat. A giant moose head trophy hangs above me, and it’s both impressive and a bit gruesome at the same time. Still, it fits into the over-the-top decor of The Frosty Otter just right, and I can see why this place is so busy.
Betsy brings me an ale from an Alaskan brewery.
“Your watch is way off, hon,” she says, gesturing at my wrist. “You need to reset it, and to local time.”
I smile and shake my head. “Can’t. It’s broken.”
It’s not even a particularly impressive watch, just a standard blue and silver dive watch. It used to belong to my dad, and it stopped working after a deep-sea scuba expedition. But he never bothered to fix it, just kept wearing it broken. “Time doesn’t matter,” Dad liked to tell me and my sister, “because if you live with one eye fixed on the end, you’ve already lost.”
It’s a lesson I haven’t always been good about following, but I plan to now. Which is why I wear his watch like this. It was broken when Dad used to wear it, and it was broken when I inherited it. The watch might not keep time, but it’s a good reminder for how I want to live: both eyes on the present.
Another group of boisterous men pours into the restaurant. The room breaks out into cheers as the seven of them enter, and people lift their glasses to toast their arrival.
“Who are they?” I ask.
“King crab fishermen from the Alacrity,” Betsy says. “Every time they’re back in port, they come here to celebrate their haul.”
“Fun for them, but why is everyone else cheering?”
Betsy smirks. “Self-interest. The Alacrity’s captain, Sebastien, is legendarily generous. He buys a round of drinks for the whole restaurant whenever he’s here. Speaking of, I better get back to the bar, ’cuz orders are about to flood in.
I thank her for the beer and settle in to people watch. I take a sip—it has a lovely hint of honey in the finish—at the same time the tallest of the crab fishermen takes off his coat and turns toward the bar, his silhouette framed by the light cast from the gold glow of the bulbs overhead.
Déjà vu whispers against the back of my neck like winter’s breath, prickling my skin and tingling down my spine. I freeze.
I know him.
“A round for everyone, on me,” Sebastien says, and The Frosty Otter erupts in another cheer.
Only I am quiet. Because I’m staring at his profile—one I’ve known for too long in my own head. When I was being bullied in middle school, I made up an imaginary best friend to help me through it. And then I kept him around and he grew up with me, even though I should have given up a juvenile idea like that forever ago.
He’s also been the star of every short story I’ve ever written.
Now he’s standing right here. In the flesh. It’s hard to tell how old he is, because he has one of those faces that’s impossible to pinpoint. But if the inconceivable is true—that this man is the same as the one I conjured in my mind—he’s about thirty, like me.
And his features are all so familiar. That mess of dark hair and those quiet blue eyes that seem to hold a locked icebox of secrets. That J-shaped knife scar along his jawline, which matches a vignette I wrote about a bar fight in Portugal. Those shoulders, proud yet heavy, as if the man to whom they belong has seen a little too much of the world, yet survived.
In my stories over the years, he’s shown me adventure and laughter, the sweetness of first love, and the devotion of true commitment. I know what he looks like with wind whipping through his hair as he dives off a cliff into the ocean. I know his skin tastes of salt afterward. I know the sound of his voice when he sings his soulmate softly to sleep, and the rhythm of his breath when she wakes before he does.
But I’ve never met him—never even knew his real name—until today.
Sebastien.
My palms sweat against the pleather seat, despite the cold. How is it possible that someone I made up is actually real?
I watch as Sebastien goes over to the bar to help Betsy carry all the beers. He certainly doesn’t have to do that; after all, he’s the one paying. And yet, I’m not surprised. It fits with what I know of his personality.
What I think I know.
What I made up.
Still, I can’t stop following his every move. He walks across The Frosty Otter, handing out beers to everyone he passes. He doesn’t say much but he smiles broadly, and as hands reach for the drinks he’s paid for, they also pat him on the back, press a hand to his arm in thanks, beam a smile back at him. Clearly, Sebastien is well loved here.
I want to know him, too.
The old version of me would slide lower into my seat, cowed by disbelief and anxiety into doing nothing at all. I wouldn’t consider talking to him, for fear of rejection. I’d stay here in the booth instead, where I already understand the lay of the land, preferring a known torment to an unpredictable risk.
But that’s Old Helene, I remind myself. New Me is determined to do things differently.
Get up. You can do this.
When Sebastien’s done distributing the beers on his tray, he returns to his table. The fishermen are in high spirits, clinking glasses with one another, but Sebastien retreats to a dim booth, like he’s glad to let his crew have all the glory.
Heart pounding, I rise slowly, weaving through the crowd that’s gathered to congratulate the crew on another great crab catch.
At first, Sebastien doesn’t see me approach, so I catch him spinning his beer glass absentmindedly on the table—clockwise twice, counterclockwise once, then the pattern repeats. I pause midstep, because that’s one of the little character details I’ve given him over the years in my stories. Doesn’t matter if the vignette is set in a mountaintop cabin or a tent in the middle of the Sahara—if there’s a table with a cup on it, he spins it exactly this way each time.
I don’t understand how any of this is happening.
But now that I’ve decided to approach him, I can’t stop. I’m a snowflake caught up in a current of wind, and there’s no stopping me on this careening path I’ve chosen. Plus there’s something else, too, something between him and me that draws me closer, that won’t let go.
It’s only when I’m right at his table’s edge that he glances up.
A flutter of a heartbeat wings between us.
Sebastien blinks. And then his mouth drops open and he stares at me like a sailor who’s been lost at sea but suddenly sees the North Star in front of him.
I’m no better. As soon as our eyes lock, I’m lost in his. Not because they’re perfect—there’s actually an angry white scar that runs across his left brow and eyelid and continues below—but because I can’t believe these eyes are here, right in front of me. Real.
“Hi,” I breathe.
“Hi.” His voice is a rumble low in my belly. I can already tell by the way he holds his silences that this Sebastien—like my imagined one—is a man of few words. But if those words can make me feel this way, I want as many as he’ll spare.
“It’s you,” I murmur, nearly nonsensical from the impossibility of this moment. “I know you.”
Sebastien’s expression shifts in an instant, defensive walls going up behind those glacier-blue eyes. “I beg your pardon?”
Our connection snaps. I feel it physically, like a gust of wind ripping through a kite string drawn too tight. I’ve said too much.
But I’m still unable to approach this conversation rationally, so I plow on. “I know you,” I say again, as if this will somehow make him believe.
Sebastien purses his lips, brow furrowed—not confused, like I’d expect. But something else.
Upset.
“You’re confusing me for someone else,” he says.
I shake my head. I’m convinced now that it wasn’t just an airfare sale that brought me to Alaska.
“I’m Helene.” I want to reach out and touch Sebastien, to feel him solid beneath my fingers.
I offer my hand to shake instead.
But the muscles in his neck tighten, and he doesn’t offer his name, doesn’t take my hand. He gives me a tight, impersonal smile, the kind that anyone who’s ever been in a bar knows means I’m not interested, and says, “If you’ll excuse me, I just remembered I have to take care of something at home. Forgot to put out food for my dog.”
One of his crew is within earshot and frowns at us.
Sebastien slides out of the booth past me and mumbles something inaudible to the frowning guy. The man protests, but Sebastien passes him a credit card and bumps fists with him. Without looking back at me, without acknowledging that I’m still standing here, Sebastien walks out of The Frosty Otter and then . . .
He’s gone.
SEBASTIEN
I flee to the parking lot and climb into my truck, where I press my head against the steering wheel. My entire body shakes.
I know you, she said.
You’re confusing me for someone else, I replied.
I lied.
Of course I know her.
The moment I saw Helene, I tasted the faint sweetness of honeyed wine on my lips, a ghost of a kiss. It happens every time she comes back into my life, a memory lingering from the first night we met, centuries ago.
She has no idea who she is, of course. That her presence—or absence—in my life has defined my entire existence.
I may go by Sebastien now, but my name was originally Romeo.
And hers was Juliet.
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