#AudioBookReview: Only Santas in the Building by Alexis Daria

#AudioBookReview: Only Santas in the Building by Alexis DariaOnly Santas in the Building (Under the Mistletoe Collection, #5) by Alexis Daria
Narrator: Ruby Corazon
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, short stories
Series: Under the Mistletoe #5
Pages: 65
Length: 1 hour and 31 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 12, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazon
Goodreads

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, especially for a comic book illustrator whose late-night fantasies become real in a festive and flirty short story by bestselling author Alexis Daria.
All Evie Cruz wants for Christmas is a nap. And maybe some ornaments for her naked Christmas tree. And while she’s making a list, she wouldn’t mind unwrapping her sexy upstairs neighbor like a present. Luckily, the building’s Santa-themed party and a surprise sprig of mistletoe give her just the opening she needs to make all her wishes come true.
Alexis Daria’s Only Santas in the Building is part of Under the Mistletoe, a stirring collection of December romances that thrill and tingle all the way. They can be read or listened to in one swoony sitting.

My Review:

There are going to be more than a few readers/listeners to this one who are disappointed – not by the story itself but rather because the title sets up an expectation that the story will have a bit of a resemblance to the TV series, Only Murders in the Building. It doesn’t.

But I wasn’t looking for that. Instead, I got caught up in Evie’s freelance, gig-economy, deadline-driven life. Let’s just say that her cramming and scrambling to get her work in just minutes before the deadline sounded familiar. I understood the high she got from concentrating SO HARD and squeaking in JUST under the wire a bit too well.

That she was using the concentration and the pressure and the all-consuming nature of it to keep a whole lot of emotional stuff at bay was also something it was easy for this reader to identify with.

And then the story turned utterly delicious when her really sweet and deliciously hot neighbor turned up at her apartment door. It was pretty easy to see exactly why she had a crush on this guy – and to understand why she had no time to figure out whether that crush was returned – or not. Especially with her older sister naysaying in her ear at every turn.

The story, this deliciously sweet little holiday treat, comes to a delightful climax at the building’s annual holiday party, when everyone in the building comes to the penthouse apartment dressed as some variation of Santa – and a couple of meddling neighbors maneuver these two particular Santas under some strategically placed mistletoe to make their Christmas wishes come true.

Escape Rating B: I picked this second title from the Under the Mistletoe collection for the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon because I wanted something short and sweet – or in this case steamy – for a day when most of us will still be recovering from yesterday’s turkey-induced coma.

And that’s exactly what I found.

Two stories into the collection, though, I’m starting to think that the real theme of the whole thing isn’t so much mistletoe as it is misunderstanding. Or at least mixed signals. Particularly the kind of mixed signals that occur between two people who don’t know each other well enough to know what the person they’ve been dreaming of – or at least daydreaming of – might be thinking about them.

Because their own insecurities get in their way. Both of their ways.

As compared to All By My Elf, the disconnect between Evie and Theo doesn’t even come close to a misunderstandammit. They don’t KNOW each other – and if someone doesn’t help them straighten out their crossed wires, they won’t have a chance to.

Hence that well-placed mistletoe.

Only Santas in the Building turned out to be the perfect light and frothy little story to listen to at the end of a long week. I got precisely what I was expecting and even a little bit more as Evie’s work resonated more than this reader expected. Then again, it resonated more with Theo’s work than he expected, too.

If you’re looking for little pick-me-up stories, this collection has been great so far – and I’ve already finished a third. They’re not deep, because there’s no time for that in this short format. But they’ve all been lovely for what they are and a perfect read and/or listen to help fill out my personal 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon readings.

Review: A Lot Like Adios by Alexis Daria

Review: A Lot Like Adios by Alexis DariaA Lot Like Adiós (Primas of Power, #2) by Alexis Daria
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance
Series: Primas of Power #2
Pages: 381
Published by Avon on September 14, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Hi Mich. It’s Gabe.
After burning out in her corporate marketing career, Michelle Amato has built a thriving freelance business as a graphic designer. So what if her love life is nonexistent? She’s perfectly fine being the black sheep of her marriage-obsessed Puerto Rican-Italian family. Besides, the only guy who ever made her want happily-ever-after disappeared thirteen years ago.
It’s been a long time.
Gabriel Aguilar left the Bronx at eighteen to escape his parents’ demanding expectations, but it also meant saying goodbye to Michelle, his best friend and longtime crush. Now, he’s the successful co-owner of LA’s hottest celebrity gym, with an investor who insists on opening a New York City location. It’s the last place Gabe wants to go, but when Michelle is unexpectedly brought on board to spearhead the new marketing campaign, everything Gabe’s been running from catches up with him.
I’ve missed you.
Michelle is torn between holding Gabe at arm’s length or picking up right where they left off—in her bed. As they work on the campaign, old feelings resurface, and their reunion takes a sexy turn. Facing mounting pressure from their families—who think they’re dating—and growing uncertainty about their futures, can they resolve their past mistakes, or is it only a matter of time before Gabe says adiós again?

My Review:

It’s safe to say that ALL humans over a certain age have at least some emotional baggage, and that the age in question is probably a lot lower than anyone likes to think about.

A Lot Like Adios is a second-chance romance. Well, for Michelle it’s a second chance romance. For Gabriel, it’s a second chance at pretty much everything. Both of these characters have LOTS of emotional baggage – all of it steamer-trunk sized. Their relationship has its OWN steamer trunk of baggage, enough to furnish a life across the country and away from each other, which is exactly what Gabriel did when they were 18.

He packed up his life, his heart and his emotional baggage and shipped them all to UCLA, trying his best not to look back at his parents’ house in the Bronx. The house that Michelle lived right next door to. The house that felt like a prison, with Michelle as the only light coming through the bars.

Michelle and Gabriel were best friends through grade school and high school. Michelle thought their friendship would last forever – even if it never became anything more. But Gabe had a secret, a secret that came out the same night they were on the cusp of that more. He was leaving for UCLA in less than a week, and he hadn’t ever told his best friend that he was even trying to get away.

From his parents, not from Michelle. But by keeping it a secret, he lost it all.

Now Gabe is back in the Bronx. Briefly. As briefly as he can possibly manage. He’s become the success that his father claimed he would never be, and he’s back to expand his very successful celebrity gym from LA to New York City. Michelle is the best in the business at creating ad campaigns and branding for businesses just like his. They’ll need to WORK together to achieve his goals, even though work is the last thing on either of their minds.

But first, Gabe has to figure out what his goals REALLY are. For his business. With his estrangement from his entire family. And most important of all, with Michelle.

Escape Rating A-: This is a story about unfinished business. Both literally, as Gabe’s and Michelle’s separate work-lives are sitting at uncomfortable crossroads for completely different reasons, and figuratively in the relationship sense.

As the story opens, both of their emotional lives seem to be nothing but unfinished business, and it all circles back to the breaking of their friendship all those years ago. They were HUGE parts of each other’s lives for over a decade. All of their formative experiences included each other. And then they cut themselves off, leaving an equally huge hole in both their pasts and their futures.

That the split occurred just as they were exploring the possibility of being more than friends made the situation all that more heartbreaking. In their hearts, they hoped to be each other’s forever and never quite moved on from that wrenching and seemingly final goodbye.

But Michelle stayed a part of her intrusive, invasive, but ultimately loving and mostly supportive family. Gabe cut most of his off after a last and final argument with his father. The man did not mince any of his words, telling Gabe to leave and not come back. Gabe took the man at his word – even if in his heart he’s still working for the approval his dad always withheld.

When Gabe comes back to the Bronx to discuss expanding his business with one of his financial backers he doesn’t want to be there. He doesn’t want to be anywhere near his family, he doesn’t want to work with Michelle and he doesn’t want to break his own heart again. Or at least that’s what he tells himself.

What he really wants is an entirely different story, so a huge chunk of A Lot Like Adios is getting him to figure that out. Gabe can’t admit what he really wants until it’s shoved in his face. Michelle, on the other hand, knows exactly what she wants but believes that it’s out of reach.

So the story is Gabe figuring himself out, one step forward and sometimes three steps back. Michelle’s story is getting past heartbreak one more time, and deciding how she’s going to survive and thrive whether Gabe gets his head out of his ass or not, because she’s betting not.

But wishes sometimes come true after all.

At the end of my review of last year’s marvelous You Had Me at Hola, I expressed a wish that the author would write more about the Primas of Power, the cousins who provide both a cheering section and a push whenever the heroine needs one in that story.

Lo and behold, we have A Lot Like Adios, the sequel to You Had Me at Hola, the second book in the Primas of Power series. My wish has been granted. Now I’m wishing for more!

Review: You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria

Review: You Had Me at Hola by Alexis DariaYou Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Primas of Power #1
Pages: 365
Published by Avon on August 4, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Leading Ladies do not end up on tabloid covers. 
After a messy public breakup, soap opera darling Jasmine Lin Rodriguez finds her face splashed across the tabloids. When she returns to her hometown of New York City to film the starring role in a bilingual romantic comedy for the number one streaming service in the country, Jasmine figures her new “Leading Lady Plan” should be easy enough to follow—until a casting shake-up pairs her with telenovela hunk Ashton Suárez. 
Leading Ladies don’t need a man to be happy
After his last telenovela character was killed off, Ashton is worried his career is dead as well. Joining this new cast as a last-minute addition will give him the chance to show off his acting chops to American audiences and ping the radar of Hollywood casting agents. To make it work, he’ll need to generate smoking-hot on-screen chemistry with Jasmine. Easier said than done, especially when a disastrous first impression smothers the embers of whatever sexual heat they might have had. 
Leading Ladies do not rebound with their new costars. 
With their careers on the line, Jasmine and Ashton agree to rehearse in private. But rehearsal leads to kissing, and kissing leads to a behind-the-scenes romance worthy of a soap opera. While their on-screen performance improves, the media spotlight on Jasmine soon threatens to destroy her new image and expose Ashton’s most closely guarded secret.
 

My Review:

I went looking for happy endings again. Is anyone surprised? In that search I discovered a whole bunch of friends’ recommendations for this book, as well as remembering that it had been on several best of the year lists – and that I had a copy! Problem solved for a day – not that I didn’t immediately go looking for more for the rest of this week.

While Jasmine and Ashton do have each other at “Hola”, it’s also true that the title is quite a bit catchier than the actual truth, which is more like a mutual “you had me when you spilled coffee on me” because that’s not half so romantic sounding – or succinct.

This is a story that works in multiple directions. One is that it’s a story of two people who both believe, and for very good but completely different reasons, that they need to concentrate on their careers and absolutely NOT on any possibility of romance.

Second, it’s a story about validation. Again, for entirely different reasons, both Jasmine and Ashton are laboring under the mistaken belief that they are not good enough, not doing enough, not accomplishing enough, not trying hard enough, not doing the right things rightly enough.

In other words, they both have serious cases of impostor syndrome. Some of that arises from their family situations, and some of it comes from the way that the entertainment industry which they are both involved in, suffers from a baked-in preference for actors AND people behind the camera and in the front office, who are not like them.

Both are Latinx and both have had plenty of barriers put in their way in their chosen profession. Which leads to the third thing about this story, in that it is a celebration, not just of Latinx culture in all of its own diversity, but also in the joy of being part of a team that has your back and helps you put forth your best everything because of what you all share – particularly in a world that tells you how “other” you are at pretty much every turn.

The romance is, in many ways, an opposites attract kind of love story. Jasmine is very open. She trusts easily and she falls in love easily – both to her own detriment. As a result, much too much of her personal life gets splashed on the tabloids, even if most of what they write is made up nonsense.

Ashton, on the other hand, is extremely private and closed off. He has a secret that he is desperate to keep, but keeping that secret also keeps him from opening himself up even to friendship, let alone anything more.

She’s public and he’s private. She’s gossip fodder and he ruthlessly suppresses publicity. It shouldn’t work. Neither of them really wants it to work, at least as the story begins.

But they’re playing the romantic leads in a made-for-streaming romantic comedy series. On screen, they have to generate serious chemistry, which means that off screen they need to at least be able to talk to one another.

Talking, as it so often does, leads to a whole lot more. A more that neither of them wants to reveal. Until the paparazzi take care of all of that for them in, of course, the worst way possible.

And very nearly destroy the best thing that’s ever happened to either of them.

Escape Rating B+: While this wasn’t quite as transportive as a couple of the romances from my week of happy endings – I’m thinking in particular of Take a Hint, Dani Brown and Spoiler Alert – a good reading time was definitely had by all. Or at least by moi.

I loved the romance between Jasmine and Ashton. It read like a variation of the fake-romance trope, but a variation that definitely worked. It wasn’t exactly that they were faking a romance, but they were faking a romance. It’s just that everyone knew it was a fake, because it was the onscreen romance between their characters.

Come to think of it, they were really faking NOT being a romance. A kind of double-fake. It worked, and the reasons for it worked.

While Ashton’s reason was more important, that he was a single father who was hiding his son in order to keep him safe, it was Jasmine’s reason that resonated most with me. As a middle child, she often felt overlooked between her overachieving older sister and her younger, always the baby sister. And so many of her family interactions, while well-meaning, intentionally or otherwise reminded her over and over (and over) that her goals and achievements weren’t as important or as successful, from her family’s perspective, as theirs. She felt overlooked and as a consequence looked for validation in romantic relationships – and looked too hard and all too often with men who didn’t value her either.

Jasmine’s feelings, and her response to them, will resonate with a lot of women who felt overlooked or overshadowed in their families and used similar methods to find validation, whether that overshadowing was the result of middle-child syndrome, workaholic parents or some other reason.

Ashton’s reasons, on the other hand, while they make sense were more the result of his understandable paranoia after a stalking incident than anything actually based in reality – as Jasmine pointed out. If he wants to be a famous actor and someday win an Oscar, he can’t keep his private life truly private. It’s understandable that he wants to but his goals are mutually exclusive.

In the story he clung to that overwhelming desire to keep his son a secret a bit too long. The point had been made, and made, and made to the point where it began to feel repetitive and I just wanted the story to get on with it. Your reading mileage may vary.

That being said, the story was lovely and I really enjoyed myself with Jasmine, her team and especially the Primas of Power, her terrifically supportive cousins who always had her back – especially when they needed to push her forward.

So a wonderful romance, a terrific story, and I’d love to see more about the Primas of Power and Jasmine’s entire clan!