e-ARC, 432 pages
Release Date: March 2, 2021
Published by: Balzer + Bray
Read from: February 22- March 5, 2021
Stand-alone
Source: Edelweiss
TW: Parent Gone, Small mention of drugs, underage drinking
For fans of: Contemporary, Romance, Realistic Fiction, Diverse Authors, MC is POC, POC on cover, Own Voices, Second Chance Romance, YAJenny Han meets “Jane the Virgin” in this flashy and fun Own Voices romcom from debut author Monica Gomez-Hira.
Carmen Aguilar just wants to make her happily ever after come true. Except apparently “happily ever after” for Carmen involves being stuck in an unpaid summer internship! All she has to do is perform! In a ball gown! During the summer. In Miami.
Fine. Except that Carmen’s company is hired for her spoiled cousin Ariana’s over the top quinceañera.
And of course, her new dance partner at work is none other than Mauro Reyes, Carmen’s most deeply regrettable ex.
If Carmen is going to move into the future she wants, she needs to leave the past behind. And if she can manage dancing in the blistering heat, fending off Mauro’s texts, and stopping Ariana from ruining her own quinceañera Carmen might just get that happily ever after after all.
*MY THOUGHTS*
It didn’t take much for me to add this to my TBR. All I needed was the title, the super cute cover, and the fact that it was pitched as an #OwnVoices Contemp Romance. And that’s all I needed. I knew it was going to be a hit.
“Yes, my first party as an official princess. Beauty. Belle. Me. Except thanks to the parts of Mami’s history lesson that I couldn’t drown out, I felt more like the Beast. Not the one who was apparently running late. He would be the one weaving the mask you could see.”“3%
Carmen gets some bad news and is scrambling to make up some credits to graduate. She takes a job as a princess as a summer internship. When Suddenly, things start to turn for the worse. They’re hired by her spoiled cousin to dance at her quinceañera and the boy she’s despised for the last 3 years is suddenly back and her dance partner at that. In order to move on, Carmen knows she’ll have to leave them behind, but will that work when they’re in such close proximity?
“They didn’t need to worry. I wouldn’t crush this kid’s dreams. Life would do it to her soon enough.“6%
In some way, this hit all the right spots for me. But in other ways, there were some things that could have been different. As far as what worked, I LOVED the own voices aspect of this. It flowed and was definitely genuine. This wasn’t something that could have written by anyone else. Having never been to a quince, but watching plenty of my friends participate in them in high school, I was glad to “go to” one this way. I love all the traditions that I learned about while reading this as well.
“How about instead of remebering, you listen to what I’m actually saying right now.”“29%
I also loved the writing style. The main plot got a bit redundant because it was the same things over and over. Like the practice, fight, be mad, make up. But she also included things like other parties and things that they had to do as Dreams, which was enough to distract me. Those were the most interesting parts. I LOVED when they went to parties. I just thought it was cute lol
“La envidia te come. Envy eats you alive.“52%
But then there was the stuff I wasn’t so fond about. Like the characters. Well mainly just the main characters. She just keep going on and on about the same thing. The entire book. Normally that doesn’t bother me, but it seemed like she learned nothing to entire book. When she finally seemed like she learned something, I was at like 90 something percent of the book. I would have rather seen more of the new Carmen, than the same pessimistic, sad one we’d seen the entire book. I also didn’t like how easy Tia Celia got off. The entire book she was AWFUL and then when it finally came down to it, she got off way easier than she should have. Someone else should have jumped in and told her off or something. She just wasn’t a good person and I don’t think she deserved the niceness she got.
“It was too easy for me to think that no one would ever work with me on anything. Easier than asking. But maybe I was tired of taking the easy way out. Maybe it was time to force the world to reject me, instead of rejecting myself.”“56%
I also wasn’t a fan of the romance. I wanted more than what we got. From the way Carmen acted, it was obvious we didn’t get much time with the love interest. There were times when they finally got it together, but it was for short stints and I would have loved to see more of the two of them together. I mean, this was a contemp romance. I think I would have given it 5 stars if it was pitched as a comping of age instead. But since it was a romance, I wished it had “more” romance. (Between Carmen and her love interest. There was more with her mom than her lol)
“Just because love wasn’t everything didn’t mean that it wasn’t something.“95%
This wasn’t exactly what I was hoping to get from this book, but it was still a great read. It hit a lot of the high points for me, but unfortunately, it wasn’t perfect. But if you’re like me and like sunny settings, some sweet moments, and learning about familial traditions you’ve never experienced before, this is the book for you!
Overall, I give this
