You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria

It's been a minute since I devoured a book in less than a day, but Alexis Daria's You Had Me at Hola drew me in from the first page with her leading lady, Jasmine, and her male counterpart, Ashton. I love stories with big, messy but loving families, sexy men with secrets, and women who know what they want. Daria did not let me down!

From the beginning, readers are introduced to Jasmine and her cousins Ava and Michelle, and I immediately want books about Ava and Michelle too because they are snarky and awesome and insightful and I want to see more of this family, especially their abuela. It's said that cousins are your first friends and Ava and Michelle know Jasmine's history of falling for men better than most and are determined to keep her on track with her plan to becoming a leading lady.

Ashton Suarez is a sexy man with secrets. As soon as I understood he came from the telenovela world and was hoping to go more "mainstream" by doing a bilingual show, I immediately thought of Rojelio De La Vega from Jane the Virgin and couldn't get him out of my head, which is fine because have you seen Jaime Camil? You haven't? Ok, I'm going to pause while you go Google him because you need to understand the levels of fineness we're talking about. 💃🏾salsas to Celia while I wait💃🏾 Ok, you've seen him? Good, let's continue.

Jasmine has a plan, Ashton has a plan, can they both get what they want and stick to the plan? Yes and no.They can get it but there has to be some compromising on the parts of the both. Do they slide into the sheets and do the horizontal hokey pokey? Yes, it's a telenovela within a telenovela, did you really think there'd be no sex? And it's hot and steamy and whew!

As you can tell, I really enjoyed You Had Me at Hola, so much so that I'm adding Alexis Daria's backlist to my TBR!

The Secret Women by Sheila Williams

Elise, Carmen and DeeDee meet in a yoga class and quickly bond over the loss of their mothers. Whether their mothers passed years ago or recently, all of the women have some healing to do. Since all three have or need to sort through their mother's things, they decide to tackle the tasks together, leading to the discovery of the secrets their mothers kept from them when they were alive.

This book was an absolute "can't put down, must finish reading this or I won't be able to sleep because I'll be wondering what the characters are doing" read. I loved that the women were older and that their ages ranged from their 40s to their 60s, because that's life, right? Growing up, your friends tend to be your age, but as an adult, you make friends with people you have things in common with. So at 21, you probably never imagined you'd be hanging out with a 45 year old, but at 40something, the concept of age-based friendship becomes an illusion.

The other aspect of the book that I was really loved as the recognition of mothers are fully realized beings outside of being mothers. Ask yourself how old you were when it first dawned on you that your mother had a whole life before you came along, one that didn't include you. She didn't just wake up as your mother, she was out doing things, living (and probably well) long before you came along. These are things that all three ladies discover in The Secret Women. And learning these kinds of things then lead you to reconcile what you knew and what you thought you knew about your mother. Talk about a wig snatching read!