Lovesick 2026 Series: Certain novels feel like they’ve been waiting to be adapted. Not because they’re easy to translate to the screen—the best ones rarely are—but because their characters are so vivid, their worlds so fully realized, that you can almost see them moving even as you read. Ángeles Mastretta’s Mal de Amores is one of those novels. Published in 1996, it became a touchstone of Mexican literature, a sprawling love story set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution that uses its central romance to explore questions of freedom, identity, and what it means to build a life on your own terms.
Now, after years of anticipation, the adaptation is finally arriving. Netflix has set September 2 as the release date for Lovesick, the series version of Mastretta’s novel. The project has an unusual and deeply personal provenance: it was written and directed by Catalina Aguilar Mastretta, the author’s daughter. That connection isn’t just a piece of trivia. It suggests an adaptation that will treat the source material with the care it deserves—not because the filmmakers are trying to be faithful out of obligation, but because they understand the book’s rhythms from the inside.
Lovesick 2026 Series (Mal de Amores): What the Story Is About
Mal de Amores is set in Puebla, Mexico, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Revolution is brewing, and the old order is starting to crack. At the center of the story is Emilia Sauri, a young woman who refuses to accept the limitations her society has placed on her. She wants more than marriage and domesticity. She wants knowledge, purpose, a life that belongs to her.
So she does something almost unthinkable for a woman of her time: she studies medicine. Not because anyone expects her to, but because she loves the science, because she wants to understand how bodies work, because she’s drawn to the possibility of healing. In a world that tells women their only value is in their relationships to men, Emilia insists on building something for herself.
And then there’s the love triangle. Because of course there is. Emilia finds herself torn between two men who represent very different futures. Daniel Cuenca is a revolutionary, a man of passion and ideals, the great love of her life since childhood. He’s restless, committed to a cause larger than himself, and he keeps disappearing into the chaos of the Revolution. Antonio Zavalza is a doctor, someone who shares Emilia’s love of science and offers her stability, partnership, a life that makes sense. He’s not the great love, but he’s a good love, and that’s nothing.
The series follows Emilia as she navigates these two relationships while the world around her burns and changes. It’s a love story, yes, but it’s also about freedom—the freedom to choose, the freedom to build a life that doesn’t depend on a man, the freedom to define yourself outside the expectations of your family and your culture.
Two Men, One Revolution?
Emilia divides her heart between two men of opposite character. Juan Pablo Fuentes, who plays Daniel Cuenca, the adventurer and revolutionary linked to his life since childhood. Fuentes, born in 2003, started in front of cameras at the age of 8 in commercials, and at 17 he filmed his first film. His career gained momentum with Pact of Silence (2023), Bandidos (Netflix, 2024) and Príncipes Savages, by director Beto Hinojosa.
The role of Antonio Zavala, the pacifist doctor who represents the other end of Emilia’s love dilemma, falls to Ivan Amozurrutia, a capital actor born in 1993 and grandson of actress Kitty de Hoyos. Amozurrutia was trained in the Center for Artistic Education (CEA) from Televisa and accumulates credits in La vendetta de las Juanas (2021), Oscuro Desire (Netflix, 2022), Donde hay fuego (2022) and El niñero (2023).
The cast is completed with Humberto Zurita, Miguel Rodarte, Cassandra Ciangherotti, Diana Bovio, Juan Pablo Medina, Alejandro Puente and Sofía Carrera. The motto chosen by Netflix to promote the production condenses the tone of the series: “Passion is revolutionary”.
The Creative Team
Catalina Aguilar Mastretta is best known for Las Horas Contigo and Todo Lo Que Imaginamos Como Luz, films that demonstrated a gift for intimate, character-driven storytelling. Taking on her mother’s novel is a significant task, but it’s also the kind of challenge that can produce something remarkable. She knows this material not just as a reader but as someone who grew up with it. That familiarity could lead to a too-faithful adaptation, or to something more interesting: a version that understands the novel well enough to translate it rather than reproduce it.
Netflix has been investing heavily in literary adaptations from Latin America, and Lovesick fits squarely into that strategy. The platform has already found success with One Hundred Years of Solitude, which became one of the most talked-about Spanish-language series in its history. Pedro Páramo, based on Juan Rulfo’s foundational novel, arrived with similar acclaim. Mastretta’s book is a different kind of project—less magical realist, more grounded in historical romance—but it shares the same DNA: a beloved work of Latin American literature, adapted with care and resources, aimed at both the domestic audience that grew up with these books and an international audience discovering them for the first time.
The Cast and Characters
Renata Cow plays Emilia Sauri, and the casting feels significant. Cow has been building a career in Mexican cinema and television, and the role of Emilia requires someone who can convey both intellectual intensity and emotional openness. Emilia is a woman ahead of her time, but she’s not anachronistic. She’s a product of her world who’s trying to push against its boundaries, and that struggle has to feel real.
The two men in her life are played by actors whose names haven’t been as widely announced, but the characters themselves are clearly drawn. Daniel Cuenca is the revolutionary, the man of action whose ideals keep pulling him away from the woman he loves. Antonio Zavalza is the doctor, the stable presence, the man who offers Emilia a future that makes sense on paper. The triangle works because both men are fully realized characters, not just archetypes. Daniel isn’t just the exciting one. Antonio isn’t just the safe one. They’re both complicated, both flawed, both genuinely in love with Emilia, and she’s genuinely torn.
The supporting cast includes Emilia’s parents—Diego, an apothecary who passes on his love of medicine, and Josefa, who encourages her daughter’s dreams. There’s also Milagros, Emilia’s aunt, who serves as a model for a different kind of life, one where the rules don’t always have to be followed. And there are friends and revolutionaries and all the other people who populate the world of the novel, filling out the canvas of a story that’s as much about a country in transformation as it is about a woman in love.
What the Trailer Shows
The trailer is brief but evocative. We see the three central characters—Emilia, Daniel, and Antonio—moving through a world that’s both beautiful and unstable. There are shots of the revolution, of medical school, of stolen glances and difficult conversations. The period setting is rendered with care, the costumes and locations suggesting a production that’s been given the resources it needs to feel authentic.
What the trailer communicates most clearly is tone. This isn’t a melodrama. It’s not a soapy romance. It’s a serious, emotionally grounded story about people trying to find their way through a moment in history when everything seemed up for grabs. The love triangle is real, but it’s not the only thing happening. The Revolution is real. The struggle for women’s autonomy is real. The sense of a world changing too fast to hold onto is real.
The Larger Context
Lovesick arrives at a moment when Netflix’s investment in Latin American literature is paying off. One Hundred Years of Solitude proved that a faithful adaptation of a beloved novel could attract a massive global audience. Pedro Páramo demonstrated that the platform could handle more challenging, less commercial source material. Lovesick sits somewhere in between—more accessible than García Márquez or Rulfo, but still rooted in a specific literary tradition that deserves to be treated with respect.
For Mastretta’s fans, the series is an opportunity to see the novel brought to life by someone who understands it intimately. For everyone else, it’s an introduction to a story that has been beloved in Mexico for decades but hasn’t always found the international audience it deserves. September 2 is the date. Emilia Sauri is waiting. And for anyone who’s ever loved a book so much they were afraid to see it adapted, this one looks like it might just get it right.
The Novel That Rómulo Gallegos Won!
Mal de Amores was published in 1996 by Angeles Mastretta, a writer and journalist born in Puebla in 1949. He studied Communication at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and she has an honorary doctorate from the Autonomous University of Puebla.
The year after its publication, the novel received the Romulo Gallegos Award —the first time that award was given to a woman— and was translated into more than seven languages. The work tells the political and sentimental history of a liberal Puebla family during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, the armed uprising of 1910, and the post-revolutionary struggles for power.
His literary debut, Arráncame la vida (1985), had already won the Mazatlán Prize for Literature and was translated into eleven languages. His later titles include Women with Big Eyes, The Sky of the Lions and Husbands, among novels, stories and memoirs. For this adaptation, Mastretta not only transferred the rights to his work; he appears as executive producer of the series.
