Alana Quintana Albertson has written thirty romance novels, rescued five hundred death-row shelter dogs, and danced one thousand rumbas. She lives in sunny San Diego with her husband, two sons, and too many pets. Most days, she can be found writing her next heart book in a beachfront café while sipping an old milk Mexican mocha or gardening with her children in their backyard orchard and snacking on a juicy blood orange. You can find Alana online at AuthorAlanaAlbertson.com, or on Instagram @AuthorAlanaAlbertson.
Ramón Montez always achieves his goals. Whether that means collecting Ivy League degrees or growing his father's fast-food empire, nothing sets Ramón off course. So when the sexy señorita who kissed him on the Day of the Dead runs off into the night with his heart, he determines to do whatever it takes to find her again. Celebrity chef Julieta Campos has sacrificed everything to save her sea-to-table taqueria from closing. To her horror, she discovers that her new landlord is none other than the magnetic mariachi she hooked up with on Día de los Muertos. Even worse, it was his father who stole her mother's taco recipe decades ago. Julieta has no choice but to work with Ramón, the man who destroyed her life's work—and the one man who tempts and inspires her. As San Diego's outraged community protests against the Taco King takeover and the divide between their families grows, Ramón and Julieta struggle to balance the rising tensions. But Ramón knows that true love is priceless and—despite all of his successes—this is the one battle he refuses to lose.
Wow, with this fantastic book, I don't even know where to start with all the compliments: the execution of the Romeo and Juliet premise? The well-crafted romance in between? Or maybe with the integration and exploration of one's cultural identity. Both Julieta and Ramón have ties to their Mexican culture. For Julieta, it's her community and her family, where she's built her restaurant. For Ramón, it's a more complicated "coming home" story, where he discovers what he's been missing, and fights tooth and nail to do what's right. Both of these stories have merit in the real world, and it was so refreshing to see them depicted with such honesty and care on the page.
Exploring two characters' cultural identities within a well-known framework must have been tricky, but Albertson pulls it off with such ease. Immediately we see that the masquerade is the Day of the Dead party, and from there, all of the other elements fall into place seamlessly with Albertson's wider story. All of our favorite parts of Romeo and Juliet are here—the masquerade, the wooing, even some quotes that we could all probably recognize in our sleep—have been effortlessly worked into Ramón's and Julieta's story. It is done in such a way that honestly at some points you can forget you're reading a Romeo and Juliet retelling. It just makes sense for a story as fraught with conflict and cultural explorations would have warring families and renouncing one's name, and everything else we love about that cornerstone text.
It's not just the cultural exploration that Albertson seamlessly incorporates into the retelling aspect, but also the romance. Of course Ramón and Julieta would have more issues than a regular couple would on the outset—but there is so much chemistry and so much connecting that they do throughout the earlier parts of the novel that makes readers root for them, even knowing the tragic ending of their namesakes'. And because this is a romance novel, of course there is no tragic ending, but we are still on the edge of our seats waiting to see just how it will all come together.
For more from Alana Albertson, visit her on her online at AuthorAlanaAlbertson.com, or on Instagram @AuthorAlanaAlbertson.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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