Angelina M. Lopez

* I received a copy of this book digitally for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily*
Hello Fellow Readers,

Hot and spicy romance featuring Latino Main Characters? Sign me up! The only regret I have is that I did not read the first book in the series After Hours on Milagro Street as I am totally missing out. So let us talk about how Gillian gets her witchiness back. A divorcee with two children and an ex-husband who is refusing to help unless she signs over her family's business, you can say that Gillian is cursed. Now back in her hometown, she runs into Nicky, the one who got away. Of course, now he's (still) hot, engaged, and successful. I could have done without him being engaged as I felt it was unnecessary, still Gillian and Nicky's chemistry was hot, and when the spice hit I rejoiced, it was steamy.

Two things I really love was how Lopez was about the realistically make Gillian's growth look. At first, I didn't know if I was going to like Gillian, as she did seem a bit dull but eventually you learn to love her. The second thing was how well Lopez captured the Latino community and how they banded together. People tend to write our community as loud and noisy but they don't convey how helpful and protectful we are to those we love. The side characters were all amazing, and I can't wait to see what the next book has in store.

Overall, A romance must read.… (altro)

This started off a bit rocky for me. Alex and Jeremiah have sex for the first time only a couple pages into the story, seconds after just barely exchanging names. It’s mostly a personal preference issue, there are plenty of readers out there who want things steamy as soon as possible so this should work for them, it’s just that I’m a slow burn romance kind of reader, I like some build up and this had none. This didn’t even allow me to get to know the characters let alone allow them to know one another or have time for any actual heat to ignite before she’s climbing on top of him, and afterwards she says truly terrible unprovoked things to him. To say that it didn’t feel like the beginning of a romance would be an understatement.

Alex verbally bullied Jeremiah nearly every time they meet for the first third or so of the novel, she just seemed mean. It took me a solid chunk of time to reluctantly get on board with their developing relationship. My struggles with Alex’s cruelty were similar to the struggles I’ve felt with some of the more extreme alpha heroes in romances, where I question why I should want the heroine to end up with someone so awful, so I guess on the plus side, this flipped gender dynamics we’re accustomed to in some romance novels, however, like those relationships, part of me questions whether it’ll be truly happily ever after for a couple when one of them is so capable of bulldozing the other if things don’t go their way.

Being purposely hurtful to someone who’s done nothing to deserve it is definitely a personality trait that doesn’t sit well with me, but there were other aspects of Alex’s character that I really did like, the way she stands up for herself and others, her personal style, and even though it wrapped up too quickly in the end, for a significant portion of the story I found Alex’s very strained relationship with her recovering alcoholic dad really compelling, I would have loved it had the novel dug into that even further.

Overall, more family interractions (including Jeremiah, I loved his longing to be a part of Alex’s family) would have been welcome as the ones there were in this story, rate among my favorite moments of the novel, although admittedly, I’m still confused as to what else Alex thought her family could have done to fix a certain situation she got herself into as a teen, it did seem like of the two bad options presented to her parents, they went with the far more preferable one so I didn’t entirely understand Alex holding that against them when the other option would surely have been much more scarring.

The other standout part of this read for me was cultural, learning about the railroad workers, families living in boxcars, etc., aspects of Latin history in America that I hadn’t known about. There’s something to be said for a book that simultaneously entertains and teaches, the author did a sound job of tying historical information into this fictional story without making it seem like research just being regurgitated onto the page.… (altro)