User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This book is pure sunshine. I was lucky enough to read an early version, and I fell head over heels on page 1. There's so much to love here: the complex family dynamics, the shimmering Miami setting, Monica Gomez-Hira's pitch-perfect voice and humor.
Carmen's desire to prove herself and outrun her past mistakes is so intensely relatable, and her second-chance romance with Mauro is one of my favorite YA relationships. I can't wait to read the final version in 2021!!
Rating: really liked it
No ♥️
I had such high hopes for this book, it was one of my most anticipated releases of the year... There were so many things I didn't enjoy; I felt like the characters were very unidimensional, the romance was bland, the love interest was kind of the worst for half of the story, the plot was lost along the way. But my major problem was the internalized misogyny that is never addressed and how pointless everything felt.
This book promised to tackle classicism, double standards, prejudice, family, and a cute second chance romance. Instead, we got
this, underwhelming and with zero nuance.
The only good thing about this reading experience was buddy reading with Lili and Vic.
Full review on my blog
I was provided a review copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
Carmen Aguilar is prepared to grin and bear it for this summer. Literally. As a party princess for Dreams Come True, she's got to smile and make nice for toddlers and more in order to complete her internship and get her high school diploma. Then her awful ex-boyfriend becomes her coworker, the Beast to her Belle. And her company is hired to put on her estranged cousin's quinceañera. Carmen is determined to succeed. She is going to smile and dance and be the best damn princess ever.
People say a lot of things. You of all people know that. What matters is what people do, and what they have done, and that's how you know what to expect.
Okay, this one made me bawl a little (a lot) at the end.
It was definitely good, although not quiiiiiite what I was expecting.
Based upon that blurb, I was anticipating a more light-hearted YA contemporary romance with lots of shade/homage to Disney and their princesses and a little insight into womanhood and feminity, not a book that was going to take my heart and rip it into a million pieces and then sew it back together.
Carmen is a girl with baggage and walls. She has had to build those walls to protect herself, from the assholes who catcall her on the streets to the former classmates who treated her like a whore.
Most of her issues stem from a single instant—three and a half years ago, she dated a boy named Mauro, who incidentally happened to be the son of a very famous photographer. The boy promised his dad would take photos of her for her quince, and Carmen told her younger cousin, who told
everyone. Then, after the rumor blew up, Carmen came to Mauro's party, found him with another girl, her 12 year old cousin got drunk and took video of everything, and Carmen called the cops on the party. As a result, Mauro was sent away and Carmen was blamed for everything. Her aunt—who had been funding a small dinner for her quinceañera—revoked the funding and Carmen built her walls.
In addition to
all this backstory—the beginning is a little rough due to the immense backstory that has to be handled—Carmen is dealing with her mother and aunt's complicated relationship. Her aunt married her mom's ex-boyfriend, and Carmen's dad was a rich boy who ended up being a fling, and her wealthy aunt looked down upon her "trashy" mom as a result, and continuously insinuated Carmen would be the exact same.
And of course, Carmen constantly feels like her aunt is slapping her in the face. Carmen had been denied her right of passage into womanhood, refused even a small, private quinceañera instead of the semi-traditional over-the-top blowout many girls experience, and to see her cousin get everything she was denied get quite literally rubbed in her face was a lot for one girl to handle. Not including the fact that she had to dance with her ex-boyfriend while her cousin gets jiggy with her crush.
Okay, that's a lot.
Carmen is a girl whose hurt translates to her rebuffing everyone. She's overwhelmed with jealousy and anger—angry at the world for being unfair, angry at her family for forsaking her, angry at the misogynistic wedding photographer who torpedoed her first internship and her ability to graduate, and jealous of her cousin who has
everything handed to her on a silver platter with no consequences.
Over time, as her past comes back to haunt her—literally—Carmen begins to grow as a person, and let her walls break down.
While Mauro was pretty much a single-dimensional character devoted to all things Carmen (with little agency of his own), Carmen's cousin Arianna was an interesting character. I wanted more of her personality to come out, but I did like how she was juxtaposed against Carmen, and how her own anger at that night was shown. And how the two cousins eventually breached their past hurt and anger.
However, the part that made me cry was the very end.
Where Carmen realizes that while you can't change the past, you can move past it, and you can forge new relationships with people. And that sometimes true family was right there all along. I wish Carmen's mom and Enrique had more page time, because when they were on page, they sparkled.
Anywho, overall this was about a girl's second chance, and how she found her own happily ever after, even if that looked nothing like what she had anticipated.
I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review
Rating: really liked it
Thank you to Edelweiss and HarperTeen for providing a copy of the ebook in exchange for an honest review.
★
Just because love wasn’t everything didn’t mean that it wasn’t something.Woof. This was so rough. It took me over a month to finish this, which should not be the case for a YA contemporary. Before this, I was averaging a finished book every three days. I'm a changed woman now, and I have some things to say.
First off, we need to put a stop to this trend of YA contemporaries in traditional prose being over the 400 page mark. Very rarely is that length ever justified. This book suffers from too many subplots and zero focus on any of them, with a dash of complicated and contrived motivations. Every bit of this reading experience was a slog for that reason. Unfortunately, I hate myself and haven't learned how to DNF books. So here we are.
Anyway. The novel is centered around Carmen, who is somehow roped into performing at her cousin/sworn mortal enemy's quinceañera as part of her summer internship. My eyebrows were immediately at my hairline because of how this transpires; her mother essentially plots with her aunt Celia (also a sworn enemy) to have Carmen's company hired for said quinceañera. Despite the fact that Celia is incredibly elitist and takes joy out of treating Carmen like she's the help. What mother would do that to her child, I don't know. And I should have known at this point that this book would be a bust for me.
On a related note, this book is filled with characters who are awful to Carmen on various occasions but ultimately receive forgiveness they do not deserve. Her cousin Ariana, Celia, two-second love interest Alex, and ex-boyfriend Mauro all fall into this camp.
Ariana starts off on rocky footing with Carmen and then continues to be heinous, divulging Carmen's parents' complicated history to her entire quinceañera corte in an effort to embarrass her — and clearly enjoys it. She then comes back with her tail between her legs and pleads for forgiveness while touting emotionally manipulative bullshit a la "I
am sorry, except none of this is my fault and I take zero responsibility".
Celia is an asshole to Carmen throughout the novel and constantly concerned about her overshadowing Ariana. More than that, her issues with Carmen stem from her pulling financial support for Carmen's quinceañera a few days out, ensuring that the party didn't happen at all. So Carmen has to spend the entire novel making sure Ariana has the greatest birthday party on planet earth while shouldering the fact that Ariana's family is the reason she never even got to celebrate that moment. Fuck outta here.
Alex and Mauro are both incredibly annoying. I don't know why Alex exists, frankly. For a pseudo-love triangle that lasts all of 50 pages, I guess? Carmen swoons over the kid for all that time, then blinks and suddenly has no interest in him at all anymore once he no longer serves the plot. Because that's how teenage girls function. They don't ever harp on anything.
Mauro is just. I think I've realized that YA contemporary romances largely will not work for me bcause the male love interests are usually complete and utter trash. Often, the trashiness comes with the age old excuse: DAAAAAAAAAADDY ISSUESSSSSSSSS. And Mauro is no exception. Poor kid essentially calls Carmen hood trash because his dad hurt his feelings. Aw. I can absolutely get past that and invest in this romance, except I absolutely will not and he can burn for all I care.
Carmen is not perfect and certainly makes mistakes; her most egregious one is from years past, having left a twelve year old Ariana to get drunk at a high school party. Which, yes, is shitty. It's the reason her own quinceañera was ruined. Some may think that a fitting punishment; I personally find it overblown. Regardless, it doesn't warrant the amount of asshatery hurled her way. She was also young and prone to having lapses in judgment, but the treatment she receives suggests that she's the only character in the novel who isn't allowed to have those.
While this is quite a long rant, all my rating really boils down to (aside from clunky plotting) is the fact that this novel is teaching a toxic lesson. The moral of the story here is "family is family, and so you forgive them and move forward".
No! Absolutely not! Cut them off! Go no contact! No adult author should be teaching teenagers that they should forgive every heinous act that has been committed against them. I'm not saying hold petty grudges for the rest of your life, but the grudges at play here are not petty in the slightest. Carmen gets treated like absolute garbage many times over, and yet the reader is meant to assume it's partially her fault because she's not the nicest person in the world? If I were in her position, I wouldn't be either!
The one star is for this: the Cuban representation, of which I don't see a lot; Carmen's relationships with her mother (even though I have some gripes there as well) and her best friend Waverly; Carmen's complicated history with her father, which I wish we could have seen more of.
Dassit.
This book even put me in a reviewing slump. Whew. Glad that's over.
Rating: really liked it
Once Upon a Quinceañera was all kinds of cute. Even though I will admit that I wasn't completely sure about the romance.. it definitely grew on me. In it, you will meet Carmen. She is currently looking for her happily ever after and dreams of it becoming true. So when she has to work with her ex boyfriend, Mauro, she doesn't think her dreams will come true anymore.
In the beginning, I wasn't a huge fan of Mauro but that doesn't mean I was a huge fan of the other guy for her either. For me, I thought Carmen was a little too young to be thinking of an HEA. So it wasn't a complete shock that I was suspicious of how things were going to go down. Especially when it came down to her ex and family.
All I'm going to say is that the romance had it's very cute moments. As for the drama? Well, it definitely made me mad at a ton of people. Not a single person was to fully blame so it was easier to just dislike everyone when certain things went down. Other than that, the ending was actually pretty freaking cute. I'm glad that it went that way if I'm being honest because it got me to change my opinion on a certain someone.
Rating: really liked it
2.5 /5 stars
Once Upon a Quinceañera is a Young Adult Contemporary romance that takes place in Miami.
The narrator is 18 year old high school senior, Carmen (1st person POV).
The cover is so cute and eye-catching. But the story was just okay.
Carmen's best friend Waverly works as a party princess. And Carmen is forced to join her.
There is a bit of a love triangle between Carmen's former fling Mauro and Alex (who Carmen is now pining over).
The quinceañera part of the story was interesting. Carmen never got to have one. And her cousin Ariana is having one soon.
The romance wasn't bad. But I just found myself wishing that more would happen. And the beginning was slow.
The last chapters were definitely the best. And the ending was pretty good. I did have a good feeling about the book when I finished it. But overall I just wanted more.
Thanks to edelweiss and HarperTeen for allowing me to read this book.
Rating: really liked it
Carmen and Ariana are cousins with a history. It's complicated. Their moms are involved. A past boyfriend named Mauro and his dad Oscar are part of the story. Carmen's absent dad Junior is an absent, but crucial thread as well. What happened on that day when Carmen's Quinceanera was canceled? Now Ariana is planning her own Quinceanera and it looks like it will be everything Carmen had dreamed of. Will it be more of a nightmare if Carmen has to perform along with the corte as part of her summer job for a part company? The bonds of family loom large in this debut novel and I loved the many ways Beauty and the Beast was woven into the plot. Can Carmen and Ariana both find a way forward where happy endings are possible?
Thank you to HarperTeen and Edelweiss+ for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
A cute fairy tale of friendship, family and crushes that we enjoy in books. Also with a little bit of drama. I love the quirkiness of the characters and I had some laugh out loud moments. I enjoyed this book. B+
Rating: really liked it
“You know what? Sometimes you aren’t effortlessly going to be the best at everything. Sometimes you have to try and screw up and try and STILL not be the best. Too bad. Sometimes people will be better than you are. Sometimes certain people will even be geniuses. Honestly . . . welcome to the world the rest of us live in, where we’re trying our best and still end up just mostly OK, and somehow manage to get up in the morning in spite of that.”
Once Upon a Quinceañera is a cute and telenovela-ish book that will make your heart melt away. I chose this book randomly, I didn't expect anything from the story or whatsoever. It turns out, I like this book enough to rate it
3 stars and not DNF it.
The story focused on Carmen Aguilar, a 18 years old girl who's so grumpy and pessimistic. She works at the Dreams as a Belle cosplay to get a credit for her high school diploma with her annoying "kinda" ex boyfriend, Mauro.
(SECOND CHANCE TROPE EVERYONE!)I was enjoying this book because the banter between Carmen and Mauro, and as much as Carmen's grumpiness this book is lovable enough to read. The plot is so real and Latinx preferences that I like the most (I'm from outside South America, lol) and the
drama!, it's kinda cheesy but I was enjoying it so much lol. Not only focusing on Carmen's and Mauro's second chance trope love story, this book is telling us about family, the typical Latinx family drama that sometimes it makes you giggle and your heart warm at the same time.
but , this book is too long, 400 pages for God's sake. And there's so many unnecessary plot that has a potential to get you bored.
But overall, this book is a good choice for summer read or for you, if you’re looking for something cheesy, heartwarming and funny.
"People do show you who they are. But that’s only part of the story. You have to have the eyes to see who they are in spite of their mistakes. And maybe some people would never show you the same courtesy. Because they’re scared, or maybe they like the lies rather than the truth. But you don’t have to be what they see. Not if that’s not who you really are. And you get to choose that, over and over again. You get to choose where you place your faith. You get to choose love. You get to choose you."
Rating: really liked it
DNF within the first chapter. I found Carmen to be kind of annoying (she seemed really aimless and too-cool-for-school), and the entire thing about her old boss Edwin sexually harassing her was written as a funny aside. I was in a similar situation when I was about Carmen's age, and I wish someone had told me that wasn't okay, but instead I just brushed it off as a "funny story", and this book seems to perpetuate that notion (and all her teachers/administrators seem to put on the blame on her for quitting that job?? And the boss isn't blacklisted, so he could continue doing this to other high school girls??). Of course, I haven't finished the book, so maybe this gets addressed later on, but opening a rom-com book with sexual harassment from one's boss seems like not the move.
The stakes/conflict presented were also not that interesting. Of course, graduating from high school is important, but I wish the author had escalated the stakes even further (if Carmen can't graduate, then what? Will she get rescinded from her dream college? Or are her parents just putting a ton of pressure on her to get a diploma? Why is this important to her, emotionally?). The "life vision" class that Carmen failed feels contrived, like a class that the author made up so Carmen could have some conflict and be forced into working for the costume company.
Stylistically, the writing was just weak, even for a debut. Awkward sentence constructions and pretty basic syntax. Typical YA heroine voice. Sometimes that's okay if the rest of the book is enough to keep me interested, but...eh.
Maybe I'll return to it someday...but honestly, I had so many other books to read, I just couldn't bring myself to keep going. Rating it two stars instead of one because there aren't enough Latin-American stories in YA, and also because I didn't actually read most of the book, so maybe it gets better later.
Rating: really liked it
[mentions of sexual harassment by an employer; underage drinking; mentions of drug abuse (hide spoiler)]
Rating: really liked it
I loved the setting and Carmen’s fierceness, and I loved the unique premise of the book. Miami and Carmen and her family’s culture were so vivid throughout the story ~ I loved the sense of place. Overall the story was a solid teen romance with family and friendship elements. I think it could have been trimmed down a bit and I did have a “here we go again” sense a few times. And despite the title, NO ONE in the story is turning 15. Librarian note: MC has just finished high school, sex and alcohol on the page. HS and up.
Rating: really liked it
CWs: allusions to sexual harassment in the workplace, HP references, sexist slurs, mentions of underage drinking, some unchallenged fatphobia, catcalling/sexual harassment, allusions to cultural appropriation, references to sex, some violence/physical assault, some exploration of parental estrangement
Sadly, this was a book that started out promising enough, but quickly disappointed me. At first glance, this story is right up my alley, because it's about a young Latinx teen enduring quinceañera shenanigans and family drama, all with the promise of tackling classism and prejudice along with a second chance romance. It started out interestingly enough with Carmen struggling through her summer job of being a "party princess" (AKA a Disney princess rip-off as the entertainment for kids' birthday parties and special events) while being forced to work with her ex, but sadly I began to lose interest the more the story wore on.
One my biggest issues with this story is that all the tension is stemming from events that not only happened before the story began, but that largely exist off the page. In a nutshell: when Carmen was younger, her family had a big fall-out with her aunt and her cousin where something scandalous happened at a party and thus cancelled Carmen's own quinceañera. This is where a large part of the animosity between Carmen and her cousin, Ariana, stems from, and it's also connected to why she and her ex, Mauro, broke up.
Even summing that up in one sentence
feels convoluted, and because that backstory was so hard to parse and yet so integral to the story itself, that made it hard to contextualize the book as a whole, even as more and more of what happened That Night is gradually revealed. Even in its full context by the end, it doesn't make much sense, and that lack of clarity makes it hard to understand the already-existing dynamics between the characters as the story progresses.
Besides the family drama being so convoluted to the point where this book felt like it needed a separate prequel to understand it, I found the characters to be mostly unsympathetic. There was a lot of unchallenged misogyny present in the story, and there was also a lot of toxic machismo being perpetuated by the "romantic lead," which made it hard for me, personally, to root for both the characters and the relationship. I'm not someone who thinks a character has to be "likeable" to have value, but it was hard for me to understand Carmen's motivations, and what little character development she experienced by the end didn't resonate with me.
All in all, this was not a memorable or meaningful reading experience for me. I had high hopes going into it because it felt like a promising Latinx YA summer romance that was setting up for some major character redemption, but it mostly left me feeling confused and empty. To this story's credit, it's a quick and relatively entertaining contemporary story full of shenanigans and drama, but ultimately I didn't glean anything from it beyond the surface-level appeal.
Rating: really liked it
Full Review on The Candid Cover
Once Upon a Quinceañera by Monica Gomez-Hira is an entertaining story about a summer internship that takes a turn. I enjoyed the tension of the family drama, and I was excited to finally see a book about a quinceañera. While the concept has promise, I found the execution wasn’t as strong as it could have been, and parts of the book drag. However, those looking for a fun and unique romcom will enjoy this one.
After quitting her internship as a video editor, Carmen finds herself working for an party company over the summer in order to graduate from high school. Her duties involve dressing up as Belle for children’s parties, but things get more complicated when her cousin, who she hasn’t spoken to in years, books the company for her quinceañera. Tension rises when Carmen’s ex-boyfriend returns to Miami and ends up working for the same company, as the Beast. This one has such a fun concept, and going behind the scenes with Carmen as she works as a party princess is an interesting experience. There are also themes of family, which I always love to see, and I enjoyed the dynamics between Carmen’s and her cousin’s family.
❀ MAIN CHARACTER IS HARD TO CONNECT WITH
Carmen is an independent and realistic character. I really felt for her, as she never got a quinceañera of her own and has to help her cousin, who is the reason why Carmen’s quinceañera was cancelled, get everything she couldn’t. Carmen has been hurt by many people, and she rightfully feels a lot of anger, but sometimes her actions as a result of this anger made me dislike her. Normally, I love to see flawed characters, but in this case, I had trouble connecting with her.
❀ CHARACTERS ARE ONE-DIMENSIONAL
My biggest issue with the book is the execution. There are many points throughout the story with a lot of backstory all at once, and this reduces the tension and makes everything drag. I also found many of the characters to be one-dimensional, and I would have especially liked to see more about Carmen’s cousin. Because of this, I found myself getting bored about halfway through the book.
❀ A FRESH STORY
Once Upon a Quinceañera by Monica Gomez-Hirais a fresh story about party planning and family drama. I loved the parts of the book that feature Carmen’s experiences as Belle, and she is an easy character to sympathize with. However, I wasn’t a fan of the infodumps throughout the book that make the story drag. I would still recommend this one, though, to those who have an interest in the subject of quinceañeras.
Rating: really liked it
Everything that is wonderful and messy about being 18.
