You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria

 

Generally my husband has no input into what I read. I read basically all day and he just looks at the pile of library books I bring home regularly and moves on with his life because, you know, it's just how I am.  But he kept hearing buzz about You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria and suggested that maybe I should read it.  It might be the buzziest book I've read since the last Ferrante book in the Neopolitan quartet.

Jasmine has been cast in a bilingual rom-com after a messy breakup left her face all over social media and the tabloids. Ashton, her sexy co-star, has been the leading man in many successful telenovelas, but he's worried that his career is in freefall after his character was killed unceremoniously in a previous role.  This rom-com is a full Latinx production, with actors from all across the spectrum of Spanish-speaking places and backgrounds.  But Ashton is closed-off and Jasmine is getting over her breakup and wants to be more than just fodder for gossip magazines and the success of this project depends on their chemistry.  What can possibly happen?

Interesting characters: Not the main characters. Look, Ashton is standoffish and kind of mean when he's cornered. He's also keeping a really big secret from Jasmine and his reasons for doing so, while understandable, come off as more of an excuse than anything else by the end of the book.  I wanted to like Jasmine, but it's not until the last few scenes of the book that she grows a spine and stands up for herself.  Much like in To Sir Phillip, With Love, I don't know why these two would want to be with the other. When the two of them talked, it was the clunkiest dialogue I've read in quite some time.  Now, I could sort of understand the whole his native language is Spanish and her native language is English translation issues, but it seemed like it was much more than that.

But. The side characters are amazing. Jasmine's family, especially her cousins and grandmother, are amazing. I'd read a whole book about the female relationships in a masculine-dominated culture all day long.  And the characters on the rom-com set are also amazing, from the director to the intimacy coordinator to the trans actor.  I'd also read a book about making a diverse and fun rom-com all day. It's too bad all these background characters were wasted on Jasmine and Ashton.

Believable conflict: It's all about a lack of communication and Ashton not telling Jasmine something quite important. I find it terrible because Jasmine is 30 and Ashton is 38 and if they can't get their shit together enough to have a tough five-minute conversation, then their relationship is doomed. I don't think it's hard to imagine a couple where important topics go uncovered, but I think that by the time people are in their 30s, they should have figured this out.  I find this whole "keeping a secret" thing to be a lazy trope and I think Daria could have and should have done better.

Emotional tension: There's little to no chemistry between these two.  A constant internal monologue of "he's hot" and "she's hot" does not make me think they should be together. The sex scenes were quite well done, I thought, but utterly wasted on these two fools. The author really tried to ratchet up the sexual and emotional tension by having their first kiss be a scripted kiss in the filming of the rom-com and I think it would have been a smart move with a different couple, but in this case it just came off as boring and didn't actually increase the will they or won't they tension as much as it could have.

Happily ever after: I guess?  I don't want to give too much away, but if someone kept such a big secret from me, I wouldn't be as agreeable to moving in with them immediately  as Jasmine was, but I did like the idea that their careers were served tremendously by this rom-com and that Latinx representation in Hollywood was a big theme in the ending. The importance of seeing people from a diverse group represented on the page and in film and television came through loud and clear and it was fun to see that also shown through the side characters in the book itself.

So this was definitely a mixed bag. I really liked everything except the romantic storyline.  The intentional diversity and the background characters were the main selling points for me. The sex-positive and consensual nature of the sex scenes were also impressive. But there's nothing about this book that suggests to me that Jasmine and Ashton will be a successful couple still together years from now. And that's disappointing.