Check out my review of You Had Me At Hola by Alexis Daria to see if this starlet romance book is worth reading!
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You Had Me at Hola
by Alexis Daria
Category: Contemporary Romance
Tags: Actor/Actress, Tortured Hero, Single Parent
Published August 2020
Rating: ★★½
Boyfriend Rating: 💍💍
Amazon | Goodreads
Soap star Jasmine and telenovela star Ashton have a lot riding on the new TV show they are making together.
Jasmine needs to improve her image after a public break up landed her in the tabloids and Ashton needs to revive his acting career or see it finished.
A disastrous first impression has their on-screen chemistry lacking so they’ve resorted to rehearsing in private which leads to a hidden fling.
But as their feelings grow, the media spotlight on Jasmine threatens not only their relationship but Ashton’s biggest secret.
You Had Me At Hola was my selection for January in the 2021 Romance Book Reading Challenge in which the goal was to read one Best of 2020 book.
This romance was selected as one of the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards Nominees for Best Romance so it was a perfect fit!
With all the accolades, I’ll admit that I went into this one with high hopes.
Overall, I did enjoy it but it never really grabbed me so it only earned a 2.5-3 star rating.
What I Liked
Jasmine and Ashton are filming a new TV show that is bilingual and a strong Latinix cast. While I couldn’t follow all of the Spanish phrases, I loved this addition to the book.
Intermixed their own love story, Daria included chapters of scenes between the two TV characters which I actually enjoyed. It was almost two romance stories in one though I would have loved even more from the “show characters.”
This aspect to the book was a unique addition!
Plus this cover is just perfect for this novel.
The Characters
While I did like both characters, neither one really grabbed me.
I could sympathize with Jasmine who was only looking for someone to love and who was dealing with bad tabloid press after her break up.
She had her Leading Lady plan set in motion to change her life around but her point of view got lost at times for me.
Ashton was dealing with two fears. One fear was that his career was on the downswing when he just wanted to break into Hollywood and provide for his family.
His second fear he had been holding onto for 8 years since The Incident that left him fearful of media attention and made him a loner.
I think it was his aloofness that made it difficult to buy into their romance and chemistry for me but you really wanted to root for him.
I was anticipating more moments of them practicing their lines to build up their chemistry but the instances that were meant to do that, such a choreographing their first kiss, just got too technical and lost me.
I would recommend checking this out as I think we need more diversity in characters and stories but it just wasn’t the full package for me.
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