You Had Me at Hola: A Novel

Jasmin Lin Rodriguez, after a messy public breakup, has decided to go through with her Leading Lady Plan and focus solely on her acting career, until there is a casting shake-up and she is paired up with Ashton Suarez.Ashton is worried that this might be his last shot at demonstrating his true talent and maybe have the break he needs to land on the big screen. But he needs to give it all he can and this include showing an incredible good chemistry with his co-star.However their first encounter has been quite disastrous..Easy to follow and even if it was quite predictable where the story was going, I couldn’t put the book down. Loved the inclusion of the Latinx characters and traditions. I wish I could have been dancing salsa with them, even if I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been as smooth as them 😂What I wasn’t expecting was the level of #steam 🔥 🔥 that was definitely unexpected and quite descriptive! Yes, the smoking-hot chemistry between the characters was kind of palpable, but wow.. the few chapters where ehm things happened or almost did were.. how to say.. calientes!Loved as well Jasmin’s cousins so I’m super happy to be soon diving into #alotlikeadios and get to know more about them!

I'm on the Book Tour for the second book in the Primas Of Power series, A Lot Like Adios, later in the month so I had to buy and read this one ASAP and I'm so glad I did!!I read the first page and felt like I was jumping into some sort of reality TV telenovela hybrid. WOW, WOW, WOW!I'd had this book on my wishlist for a while and I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw the cover; I've never even read the synopsis. Absolutely gorgeous.The story is told from the perspectives of Jasmine and Ashton and I was rooting for them from the start; it's sort of an enemies to lovers trope but with less intensity as far as 'enemies' is concerned. They're working together on a new TV series and we get to read what happens both on and off screen 😍 I loved reading about what happened between 'Carmen' and 'Victor' too.This was just the perfect romance and tale of family and I did tear up at the end. There was also great representation in every aspect, and a nice amount of spice 🔥 Absolutely adored this one and now cannot wait for the second!!

I don’t know how to feel about this one girlies, I’m honestly pretty torn about it. The books premise is really Interesting! Two film stars (a term I use lightly, but we’ll get to that) both desperate for a career boost, set out to work on a romance telenovela; Jasmin, our classic serious, uptight, girlboss romance novel protagonist, and golden retriever, puppy dog, laid back but deep down really traumatised male protagonist, who I’ve by this point entirely forgot the name of; are both very set on not falling in love, and what do they do? You tell me; this was so weird tonally, I kind of don’t know anymore. Now, the book presents itself as a light, romcom-esque, beach read; and it kind of isn’t? It’s all very confusing. The book has a bit of a tonal problem. Wanting to be a light comedy and a very serious, deeply profound and topical book at the same time, and doesn’t really seem to be able to handle that task. The characterisation of our main characters, although remaining consistent, seems to not really rest being what they are. Wanting to be deep when they really aren’t, and tackle topics that the book itself seems to not want to dive into. Around the middle part of the book, we learnt about an event in puppy-dog male protagonists life, occurring in his home and to one of his family members, that seemingly really traumatised him! He’s supposed to be deeply affected by this, and although I believe the author really tried to showcase this, the book doesn’t dare to dive deep enough into said topic to actually be impactful, or leave a lasting impression. It ultimately just- falls flat, really. And seems pretty contrived and pointless the further you dive into the book.Now, back to the whole “famous film star” thing. This book tries to brand itself on things it is not. You can’t really call either Jasmin or puppy dog sad face real… film stars??? Or even telenovela stars, in any right. They’re both C to D list celebs at best. Puppy man having not branched beyond a few series’ at a very low budget studio, and Jasmin only being recognised (when the plot finds it convenient and at no other time) for a scandal with another celebrity, this puts them both in… relatively non existent fame; making the branding of famous celebrities falling in love, Evelyn Hugo style, fall to the floor with the pull of a thousand magnets. The whole spicy romance enemies to lovers slowburn too, fails meeting expectations as well; the slow burn being both over after about 150 pages, the spicy being on a red, white and royal blue level, and the enemies to lovers lasting for about… 20 to 30 pages within our main couple meeting, five or take. Now, I will give the book some credit. The talks of consent on film set, the representation and the filming itself (which we get a few snippets of, wittten in a very interesting style!) we’re all really nice, and I enjoyed those details! The writing style itself was actually quite good, and you can tell the author knows what they’re doing. What baffles me by saying that is that the pacing, execution and subsequent ending of this book is so badly done, you’d believe it was a wierd AO3 fanfiction with like… 200 hits. Pretty disappointed with this one, I’d say.TL;DR. This reads like a Wattpad fanfiction; and the concept is so badly executed you’d think the author was on something writing this. But damn, I’d like to tap Anton, and that should count for something.

Simply enjoyed this book from start to finish,Was unable to put it down.Would read this book again.

Nach einer heftigen Trennung inklusive PR-Drama will die Seriendarstellerin Jasmine die mit ihrer Hauptrolle in einer neuen Serie verbundene Chance nutzen, um ihren Ruf reinzuwaschen. Zwar hat sie den Männern abgeschworen, aber ihr Co-Star Ashton lässt dennoch die Schmetterlinge in ihrem Bauch verrückt spielen. Doch Ashton verbirgt ein Geheimnis und will auf gar keinen Fall etwas mit dem Medientrubel um Jasmine zu tun haben ..."You had me at Hola" von Alexis Daria kommt mit einem großartigen Setting à la Netflix-Studios daher. Ich habe es sehr gemocht, den ganzen Background einer Serie mitzuverfolgen und finde, dass die Autorin da ein sehr überzeugendes Bild erschaffen hat. Besonders die Begleitung der intimeren Szenen durch eine sogenannte "intimicy coordinator" hat mir bewusst gemacht, wie fortgeschritten eine Film- oder TV-Produktion sein kann.Die Show "Carmen in Charge" bringt nicht nur Latinx Figuren in den Vordergrund, sondern kommt auch mit ein paar queeren Figuren daher. Das Cover, das von Bo Feng Lin illustriert wurde, passt dementsprechend genau wie der Titel perfekt zur Geschichte.Die Protagonist*innen Jasmine und Ashton waren glaubwürdig und sympathisch. Jasmines Entschlossenheit, an ihrem "Leading Ladies"-Plan festzuhalten, war süß, weil doch schnell klar war, dass sie Ashtons Reizen nicht lange widerstehen können würde. Ashton war attraktiv, humorvoll, der perfekte Love Interest, dessen Geheimnis mich berührt hat.Zum Ende hin wurde die Geschichte leider recht vorhersehbar, was einfach an der Ausgangslage der Figuren lag. Mediendrama, eine Geheimnis ... ihr könnt es euch vermutlich denken, was geschieht. Das hat dem Buch aber keinen Abbruch getan. Ich habe mich aufgrund des Humors und der Chemie der Figuren trotzdem gut unterhalten gefühlt und zähle die Geschichte zu einem Highlight meines Jahres.INSTAGRAM: @kim_reads_and_rambles