e-ALC, 10:37:40
Narrated by: Sofia Palmero
Release Date: February 17, 2026
Published by: Books on Tape
Read from: February 11-12, 2026
Stand-alone
Source: PRH Audio (I received this ALC free from the publisher and their app This did nothing to influence my review!)
Content Warning: Abandonment
For Readers Interested In: Adult, Audio, Contemporary Romance, Contemporary, Most Anticipated, Realistic Fiction, Romance, Social mediaA woman enlists the help of her favorite musician to win her ex-boyfriend back in this sparkling romantic comedy set in Venezuela by debut author Maria J. Morillo.
Maria “Marianto” Camacho is a planner. At twenty-seven, she has her life perfectly mapped out. Her long-term boyfriend, Alejandro, is perfect on paper, and she’s expecting a proposal any day now. She has a stable job as a lifestyle columnist at Ellas, one of Latin America’s biggest digital magazines. Her future is set; she’s sure of it.
Until everything falls apart overnight: Marianto loses her boyfriend and her job. But she’s determined to get them both back with an idea that is either delusional or ingenious—a juicy new article for Ellas that documents a series of romantic experiments to get her ex back. Thus begins The Ex-Perimento. With her bank account dwindling, however, Marianto lands a temporary gig on Venezuela’s hottest new singing competition show. Her job? Personal assistant to Simón Arreaza, the lead singer of her favorite indie band.
It’s only her second day on the job when Simón discovers Marianto’s list of romantic experiments, striking her ideas and replacing them with his own better ones. Out of desperation, she offers a proposition: Help her win back Alejandro, and she’ll give Simón’s band a profile in the magazine once she returns to Ellas. But between the close quarters on set and the blurred lines of a budding friendship, Marianto and Simón find themselves irresistibly drawn to each other, caught in a whirlwind of unexpected romance.
*MY THOUGHTS*
This was on my most anticipated list as soon as I heard it was set in Venezuela. Unfortunately it wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. In fact, I was mostly disappointed in this book, but I finished it just to “give it a fair shake.”
It started out so good! Everything was going wrong for her and she had such bad luck. It was so much happening all at once. But then the pacing got weird. Once all that happened, it took forever for anything else to really happen. This is a slow burn to like the 100th degree. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why it didn’t exactly feel like a romance to me. But it’s because it took so long for her to let them in and for other things to happen. And on top of the bad pacing, it felt more tell vs show and it just didn’t grab me.
This brings me to the writing style. I never believed in her relationships. Any of them. I can’t even tell you what finally clicked for her to realize that she loved the person she did. It was just weird because she was so dramatic in so many other areas. I didn’t understand why that was so not? Idk how to explain it. But other than that, I was interested in if she ever got him back, so I kept reading it. I needed to know if her hi-jinks worked. Also with her writing style, how in the worlf was this set in Venezuela and I have no idea what Venezuela looks like after reading it? There was no world building. It could have been set in the US for all I know.
The main character wasn’t my favorite tho. She had too much going on. She was dramatic, but also like a stalker? And she spent all that time trying to convince him that she changed, but she was still controlling him. Showing up where he was, cornering his mom, putting him on her Find My map. She was doing too much. And it was not sexy. I did feel sorry for her in some places tho. She made everything about that dude and he was NOT it. I got so mad at her for making him the one when he clearly didn’t want her. She deserved better and I was so freaking glad when she started seeing that.
This wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t what I was expecting. I wanted this to be a rom com and for the new boo to be jett setting her around and for her to actually have to make a choice in the end. There was none of that. (Trust me there was only one for her) And although I started out laughing, I actually felt bad for laughing. I even put in my notes that I made myself stop laughing because I felt bad. And from there, it just stayed that way.
I had so many notes on this lol I took that as a sign that I really couldn’t decide what I felt about this. It really was an “It was ok” type of book. So many things I would have changed, but also so much that I wish was a little more expanded on. It could have changed the whole thing.
Overall, I give this
