Blog #5: Favorite Reads of 2025 1/2
Happy (very belated) Summer Solstice! We’re already halfway through 2025! I’ve gotten through a good handful of books across genres so far and wanted to share my top three faves with you!
After Hours on Milagro Street by Angelina M. Lopez
Contemporary Romance: Forced Proximity, Only One Bed, Opposites Attract
“The Best Bitch in Bartending” Alex Torres returns to Kansas after a disastrous and epic farewell at an exclusive speakeasy in Chicago. Looking for a fresh start, Alex has set her sights on her grandmother’s old bar, Loretta’s, and intends to rescue it and transform the haunted building into something she can be proud of. With fresh ideas to save the bar and bring action to Milagro Street, Alex feels all is going according to plan. That is until she encounters the hot, professor in the darkness of the bar. Jeremiah Post is a young and ambitious college professor and has been lodging at Loretta’s for some time. During Alex’s absence from town, Jeremiah has grown fond of the Torres family and townspeople. He has made an offer to Alex’s grandmother for the bar in the hopes of turning it into the Freedom Historical Museum which will showcase stories of Midwestern colonias from Milagro Street. He didn’t realize he now has to battle the sexy bartender for the building. Between dealing with the racist ghost terrorizing the bar and Alex’s childhood bully scheming to steal the building under both of them, the two must find a way to combine their efforts if they want to save the bar.
One of the best contemporary romance I’ve read to date, After Hours on Milagro Street is a lively tale of family and found family, love, and identity. It has all the fixings that make a romance novel great: lovable tropes, fun archetypes, and spice that rounds out the character arcs. The archetypes chosen for our hero and heroine meshes well with the established tropes in the novel and helps to propel the plot forward. Alex is the tough, independent woman looking for a chance to prove herself whereas Jeremiah is the big, shy professor that wants to be accepted for who he is. Angelina then utilizes steam smartly, inverting the character archetypes to underline the soft, teddy bear personality buried within both of them and their connection to each other. All in all, while it hits all the check marks for a good romance, the novel isn’t too formulaic where it’s predictable, making this story fresh, unique, and a total page-turner.
Rouge by Mona Awad
Literary Fiction: Twisted Fairytale, Gothic Horror, Mother Daughter
It was beauty they built their bond upon, and it was beauty that tore them apart. At a young age, Mirabelle was cast away to live with her grandmother in Canada while her mother spent her days running her own dress shop in Southern California. The sudden news of her mother’s death summons Mirabelle back to the sun-stained beaches to pick up the pieces. In the midst of sorting through broken mirrors and childhood dolls, a pair of red heels guides her to the luxurious spa her mother frequented religiously. There, she slowly pieces together her mother’s terrifying beauty secret that drove her away from her daughter, away from her friends, away over the cliff’s edge. Is the way of roses a path worth walking if it means attaining otherworldly beauty?
This novel was such a refreshing read. Awad takes the classic fairytale of “Snow White” and dresses it up in supernatural intrigue with a blush of horror. From glowing jellyfishes to crying mannequins, she paints a bewitching dreamscape that I can’t help but want to slip into. Mirabelle is a character that is immediately relatable in her insecurities and desire to fit in. She puts all her faith and efforts into serums and skincare videos, losing touch with herself and her identity. Awad takes it one step further by exploring how an obsession like this destroys not only yourself but those around you, exposing the predatory nature of the beauty industry. With its golden California backdrop, this gothic tale of isolation and descent into madness makes for a fun and spooky beach read. Rouge girl summer, anyone?
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Literary Fiction: Unreliable Narrator, Wordplay, Puns
A confession of passion, obsession, and guilt, Humbert Humbert regales us, the jury, of his life and his favorite nymphet, Dolores Haze. The French literature professor first encountered her when he traveled to America only to find his original lodging plans, quite literally, burned to the ground. He was then referred to a lonely, widowed Ms. Haze who was looking to rent out a room. At first distraught with his living situation, Humbert had a change of heart upon encountering his precious darling playing in the backyard, his Lolita, his love. In his obsessive control of Dolores, Humbert finds himself pinballed across America in a never-ending roadtrip. “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
Lolita is an absolute feast of colorful prose. Nabokov takes a controversial topic and examines all its facets through wicked humor and roundabout wordplay. Nabokov covertly gets the audience to sympathize with Humbert, an utterly vile person beyond redemption, through his charming narration and playful yet distorted depiction of others and the world around him. I love that we get an unreliable narrator that drags his audience down with him in his spiraling insanity. The reader can’t help but get caught up in the entanglement of morality under Humbert’s linguistic game and experience how heartbreakingly human and horrific the whole mess is. Lolita is a roller coaster of a memoir that teases, shocks, and disturbs. Truly, an excellent work of fiction that transports the reader deep into the mind of evil.
What are some of your favorite reads of 2025 so far? With summer upon us, are there any beach reads that you are looking forward to? Until next time, happy reading!
