Second starred review for AFTER HOURS

My previous blog was about my discontent with people calling my heroines “unlikeable” when I find them admirable. My latest heroine, the bad ass bartender Alejandra “Alex” Torres in After Hours on Milagro Street, has gotten that accusation as much as any of them.

So I was absolutely thrilled by this review from Library Journal, which is my second starred review for the book. After Hours on Milagro Street is about Alex, who comes back to her small Kansas hometown to claim the family bar and finds a professor who mistrusts her intentions standing in her way.

“Likeable protagonists.” It’s absolute magic to my ears!

Booklist review

The Library Journal review wasn’t the only good news I got recently. Booklist also is a fan of After Hours on Milagro Street.

“Not since Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper mixed it up personally and professionally in Ball of Fire has there been such a marvelously mismatched yet inevitably perfect-for-each-other pair of protagonists as Lopez’s sexy mixologist and sweet professor.”

I’ve never seen Ball of Fire, but I can’t imagine Barbara Stanwyck doing to Gary Cooper what Alex does to Jeremiah in the first chapter! Still, I loved this comparison to an out-of-step couple that learns to walk hand in hand!

The full Booklist review won’t be available until June 8. After Hours on Milagro Street will be available in trade paperback, ebook, and audiobook July 26, and you can preorder it at your favorite bookstore or online retail outlet now!

Entertainment Weekly calls AFTER HOURS ON MILAGRO STREET a "sizzling summer read"

I'm thrilled to announce that with just two months until the release of After Hours on Milagro Street on July 12, my high heat, small town contemporary romance about a bad ass Latina bartender and head-in-the-clouds-but-hot professor got a recommendation from Entertainment Weekly!

"We tend to associate small town romances with the very twee and white worlds of Hallmark movies, but Angelina M. Lopez is ready to turn that on its head this summer and remind readers that small towns are as diverse as any other corner of America.... Lopez combines her signature steamy approach with a romance steeped in questions of gentrification, family, and what home really means."

Also recommended in this list of steamy beach reads are books by Casey McQuiston, Farah Rochon, Sarah McLean, Tracey Livesay, Ruby Barrett and so many other powerhouse authors. Click below to read the full article -- your beach blanket will thank you!!

Starred review and author interview in Publishers Weekly

I'm thrilled to announce that with just two months until the release of After Hours on Milagro Street on July 12, my high heat, small town contemporary romance about a bad ass Latina bartender and head-in-the-clouds-but-hot professor got a starred review from Publishers Weekly!

"Sparks fly and tempers flare in the passionate, un-put-downable rivals-to-lovers romance that launches a sizzling new series from Lopez....Reserved Jeremiah and ballsy Alex shine as Lopez expertly peels back their layers, and together they make an endearing power couple. Lopez seamlessly blends high-heat romance with discussions of Alex’s heritage and the fascinating history of 19th-century Mexican immigrants to the Kansas plains.

This is a treasure."

You can go here to read the full review!

I also got to talk to the lovely Lisa Martinez about what inspired After Hours on Milagro Street in an article they included alongside the review!

"I think that people who’ve read me more than once know that they need to strap in with my heroines. If you have a male hero, he doesn’t show up on page excusing himself for his strong points of view. I want to write strong heroines the same way."

Go here or click below to read the full interview.

Cover reveal for AFTER HOURS ON MILAGRO STREET

So thrilled to finally reveal the cover you will hopefully see in bookstores everywhere this summer!

After Hours on Milagro Street, available July 12, is my

🌺Latinx
🌺Small town
🌺High-heat
🌺Big family
🌺Opposites attract
🌺Forced proximity
🌺Grumpy vs. sunshine
🌺Story of my heart.

This beautiful cover, hinting at all the fun things inside the book, was illustrated by the phenomenal artist Alex Cabal who's designed covers for Bethany C. Morrow, Lillie Vale, and Nafiza Azad.

This book and series means so much to me. It's my family's story -- of a multi-generational Mexican-American family and the community they love in Kansas -- told with my spin: escapist plotlines, high heat, and lots of fantasy, fun, and emotion.

Guapo pobrecito her grandmother calls him. The “poor handsome man.”

Professor Jeremiah Post, the poor handsome man, is in fact standing in the way of Alejandra “Alex” Torres turning Loretta’s, her grandmother’s bar, into a viable business. The hot brainiac who sleeps in one of the upstairs tenant rooms already has all of her Mexican American family’s admiration; she won’t let him have the bar and building she needs to resurrect her career, too.

Alex blowing into town has rocked Jeremiah to his mild-mannered core, but the large, boisterous Torres clan is everything he never had. He doesn’t believe Alex has the best interest of her family, their community or the bar’s legacy in mind. To protect all three, he’ll stand up to the tough and tattooed bartender with whom he now shares a bedroom wall—and resist the insta-lust they both feel.

But when an old enemy threatens Loretta’s and the surrounding neighborhood, Alex and Jeremiah must combine forces. It will take her might and his mind to save the home they both desperately need.