A love story that starts in seat 22A: Desire and the Thaw, for Emerald Coast readers
She took seat 22A because nobody wants it. It sits right next to the engine, with a hum loud enough to drown out everything she is leaving behind. Somewhere above a desert of clouds, a stranger by the drink cart looks at her as if he has been expecting her, and introduces himself as “that voice you hear when you’re about to do something you know you shouldn’t. And you do it anyway.”
That is how Desire and the Thaw, Ivana Nazareno’s slow-burn romance set in Iceland, begins. From that page on, you are inside her head. The novel is her diary: chapters, entries scribbled at 3:42 a.m., poems, and everything she never says out loud.
Who is the stranger in Desire and the Thaw?
The stranger in Desire and the Thaw is a god of chaos, or says he is. He has no name, no fixed shape and no plans to stay. “I have a shape today,” he tells her on the plane, “but don’t get used to it.”
Maybe he is real. Maybe she invented him. Before the trip, she writes in her diary: “I felt him in my gut before he existed.” The book never lets you settle the question:
There are gods I invent
and others who invent me.
I don’t know which one he was.
He is dangerous in the way that matters in a love story: he sees her. On the plane, she feels he has read “my passport and my intentions in one shot.”
Why is the stranger in Desire and the Thaw so hard to resist?
The stranger in Desire and the Thaw never says the expected thing. When she asks what happens if she doesn’t want to fall into his game, he answers: “Then fall into yours.” Seconds later, in the aisle of the plane:
“And if I regret it?”
“Then you’ll remember me with rage.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You’ll remember me either way.”
And then the book does what every romance reader hopes for: it lets you into his head. In his own chapters, the god of chaos admits he has lost control of the plan: “I came for her. But I’m staying for myself.”
What is Desire and the Thaw really about?
Desire and the Thaw is about the moment a woman stops trying to fit in. Before Iceland there were two men. Martín set his alarm for 6:30, no exceptions, and “kissed me the same way he clocked in.” Franco, the musician, wrote her songs and then vanished into silences that felt like centuries. Each of them loved a version of her. Neither of them loved her.
If you are a Swiftie, you have met these men before. Franco is an “All Too Well” kind of love: the musician she ends up missing “in songs I know I shouldn’t listen to anymore.” Martín is pure “The Way I Loved You”: sensible, on time, never the storm. “And I wanted hurricanes,” she writes. And the night she lies next to Martín thinking only of the stranger is straight out of “Guilty as Sin?”
In Iceland, she finds out what happens when someone stops correcting her:
I felt myself in the exact moment I stopped wanting to fit in,
and I still didn’t know I was being myself.
A few lines later comes the sentence the whole book has been walking toward: “He just touched me, and I knew I was exactly right.”
That is the thaw in the title. If you have ever made yourself smaller to be loved, this is the book that tells you to stop.
Will Desire and the Thaw make you want to go to Iceland?
Yes. Desire and the Thaw is a love letter to Iceland as much as to the man. You drive with her past mossy mountains and ice gone half-black with volcanic ash, watch the sun go down at 4 p.m. on the road to Vík, and walk the Sólheimajökull glacier in crampons. In Selfoss, a coffee at a Subway turns into an hour of talking chess with a man from Wales and a visit to Bobby Fischer’s grave.
In Vík, the guesthouse has dark wood and a window open to a raging sea, and the receptionist hands her and the stranger a single key. In Hella, a family serves her hot soup and tells her elf legends, and explains that believing isn’t about how much truth is in a story but how much it resonates in your soul. By the last page, you will want to book the flight, and maybe ask for 22A.
The photos in this post were taken by Ivana Nazareno on her own trip to Iceland. They are the same images that close the novel, in the narrator’s photo exhibition, with the titles she gives them.
Is Desire and the Thaw a slow burn?
Desire and the Thaw is a slow burn: strangers on a plane, one key, one room, two beds. “Want to sleep far away?” he asks. “I don’t want to sleep with the enemy,” she answers. The book is sensual, not explicit. The heat lives in the waiting (“Because desire is better when you can hear it biting its lip”), and when it finally breaks, it reads like “an ancient language spoken in touch and lava.”
Where can you get Desire and the Thaw?
Desire and the Thaw is out in Kindle and paperback, and the buttons on this page take you to both. There is more about the book at desireandthethaw.com, and the Spanish edition, Deseo y Deshielo, has its own home at deseoydeshielo.com.
Does it end happily? We won’t tell. Near its last page, the novel says “The End,” and then, one line later, “The End?”
Read it on a winter afternoon in Destin or along 30A, with the Gulf in front of you and Iceland on the page.
Ivana Nazareno is an Argentine journalist and writer, and part of the Emerald Coast Dispatch team.
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Editor’s Choice ❤Desire and the Thaw
Ivana Nazareno
An unplanned stop in Iceland, a man who sees who she could be, and a love that burns slowly.
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Questions and answers
- What is Desire and the Thaw about?
- Desire and the Thaw, by Ivana Nazareno, follows a woman who leaves two men who loved only a version of her, flies alone to Iceland and meets a nameless stranger in seat 22A who says he is a god. It is told as her diary, and it is about the moment she stops trying to fit in.
- Is Desire and the Thaw spicy?
- Desire and the Thaw is sensual, not explicit. It is a slow-burn romance with forced proximity, and its love scenes are written in metaphor.
- Who wrote Desire and the Thaw?
- Ivana Nazareno, an Argentine journalist and writer, wrote Desire and the Thaw. She is part of the Emerald Coast Dispatch team.
- Is Desire and the Thaw available in Spanish?
- Yes. The Spanish edition of Desire and the Thaw is titled Deseo y Deshielo.