Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Full Moon Over Freedom

Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

Full Moon Over Freedom by Angelina M. Lopez

2 reviews

evelync's review against another edition

4.0

Gillian has always worked so hard to be perfect and to have a perfect life. So when she finds herself coming back home to Freedom, Kansas, divorced, penniless, and with no magic, she feels like she has utterly failed in every aspect of her life. In order to break her curse Gillian is determined to get good at being bad; so when she runs into Nicky Mendoza, her childhood friend and first lover, she knows he is just the person she needs to help her. But he is also dealing with a curse of his own.

Y’all Gillian’s journey in this book brought me to tears! As the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter’s oldest daughter, Gillian has always felt a heavy sense of responsibility to fix things and to be the strong one. So when her life falls apart she thinks she has to fix things on her own. When she finally confides in her family we see a weight being lifted from her shoulders that allows her to start forgiving herself and to learn to trust others and accept their help.

Angelina truly does a beautiful job creating a series rich with history, Mexican folklore, and brujeria! And I love seeing Milagro Street as it continues to come alive again!

Thank you NetGalley and Harlequin for the arc.

cw: infidelity, misogyny, narcissistic ex who is verbally, emotionally and financially abusive, addiction, death by overdose, grief, racism, ableism, attack by an animal

Content Warnings

bookishmillennial's review

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emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

disclaimer if you’ve read other reviews by me and are noticing a pattern: You’re correct that I don’t really give starred reviews, I feel like a peasant and don’t like leaving them and most often, I will only leave them if I vehemently despised a book. I enjoy most books for what they are, & I extract lessons from them all. Everyone’s reading experiences are subjective, so I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not, regardless if I add stars or not. Find me on Instagram: @bookish.millennial or tiktok: @bookishmillennial

premise:

fictional contemporary romance
Second in this interconnected series of standalone romances
Third-person POV limited of the two love interests
Gillian (eldest sister) returns to Freedom, Kansas after filing for divorce from her husband-of-10-years, Thomas (wealthy, powerful white man from DC who cheated on her & was a narcissistic ass to her) to figure out her next steps, since she has been unable to find work as a financial planner
Nicky has returned to Freedom to take care of William (I forget — his dad/uncle) and settle some things after his brother Lucas’ death (a year ago) but stays for the summer to help Gillian as she navigates how to keep her family bar Loretta’s safe from Thomas’ grasp
When they were 19, they hooked up because Gillian asked Nicky to “teach her” how to be a lover
Steam: 3.5/5 — they’re v horny for each other hahaha
lots of content warnings — please see below for them!

Thoughts:
I don’t know what it is about sequels that hit so hard for me but I adored this book! I enjoyed it so much more than the first book, which really surprised me. I loved badass Alex & soft-nerdy puppy dog Jeremiah. However, I ate up the dynamic between good-girl-gone-bad divorcee Gillian & bad-boy-but-really-a-simp Nicky 😭 I loved the history of their childhood friendship that developed into a steamy fuck buddies situation that turned into “the one who got away” 💔 The longing, the lust, the angst!!!!

I appreciated that Angelina wrote a story about narcissistic partners who abided by every single toxic masculinity ideal that the patriarchy brainwashes cishet men into believing is normal and okay. I also felt it was important for Gillian to grapple with the fact that she “thought she was smarter than this,” and that emotional abuse wouldn’t happen to a “woman like her.” I totally sympathized with her because I truly don’t think she was giving “pick me” energy; I think that’s a common sentiment shared by many people who have been scathed by narcissistic partners who gaslight and emotionally manipulate the fuck out of them.

It’s not that these people are not smart or not strong; I whole-heartedly believe these perpetrators get off on knocking strong, independent, smart women down a peg. It feeds their egos & reassures them that they are the big strong men that the patriarchy says they need to be. It’s abhorrent behavior, but it’s not unique so again, I appreciated that introspection from Gillian.

I hope anyone who reads this and is going through something similar is reminded that 1) none of their actions EVER warranted the abuse they received 2) they are still strong, smart, capable, worthy humans. It’s not ~*~all~*~ men but somehow, (for me) it’s always a dusty crusty man. Anyway, Gillian’s arc was *chef’s mf kiss* & I loved the magic/power elements of her story, especially with La Llorona!

You know who’s NOT a dusty crusty man?! Dirty-talking, praise-giving, affirming, Mexican American hero Nicky!!!! I love him. I love that it took him a while to get his head out of his ass, because no one is perfect hahaha. I love a creative, in-touch-with-his-feelings man. The way he empowered and trusted Gillian, rather than feeding into machismo and constantly trying to protect her… yeah, that’s the shit!

Quotes that stood out to me:
What were the chances they’d fly from opposite coasts to land in Freedom at the same moment? What were the odds that they’d meet again on Old 85? And who could have forecast that her emotional turmoil would provide him safe harbor from a storm?

The careful orchestration of a million chance events might have given her the opportunity to be downright naughty.

“I’ve always tried to be so good.” God. Good. “I tried to do everything right. But what has being good gotten me?” She’d never doubted she could get everything she wanted. He’d never doubted it, either. “I think, to break my curse, I need to be bad.”

She was a bad sister, horrible bar owner, broke financial planner, failed bruja, distant daughter, and the kind of mother who only left bartending as a viable career option for her children.

“It’s okay for the unknown to feel scary,” Gillian continued. “There are risks when you’re holding a pile of money. That’s why you diversify. You put a little here, and a little there, and a little way over there. Think about it like…dough. You take your big ball of masa, separate it into three bowls, and set them out in three different places. One of them is going to rise the most.” Yesenia gave that tsk he was used to hearing from the Mexican-American women in his life, that sound of you think you’re so clever and damn, that was clever, and I get it even though I don’t want you to get on your high horse about being clever. “Learning to invest is just like learning to bake,” Gillian said, energized. “You start simple, you learn the basics, you understand more as you do it, and you get better at it. How did you learn to bake?”

The July sun wasn’t responsible for the shock of heat that burned her.

She’d realized over the last few weeks that she was not the best judge of what she deserved and what she didn’t. As she was rebuilding the muscle, it was best to lean on the assessment of people she loved and trusted.

“Because, mijita, you are the crossroads.” Mary looked exasperated. “You are where everything meets: Mexico and the United States, big city and small town, math and magic, wealth and poverty, the masculine and the feminine, devotion to la familia and admiration for the outside world, the logical and the spiritual. You’ve felt pulled in two different directions your whole life but you’ve never needed to struggle to choose one spot over another; you are the doorway. So is La Virgen. You two are made for each other.”

All the sparks that had flown each time he’d threatened to break her curse hadn’t come just from her and her latent magic; he wasn’t just the flint to her steel. Instead, they were two live wires, both powerful beings who were making the most of their in-between existence. You two are made for each other.

She saw him every day and yet ached with how bad she missed him.

“But maybe you’ve held me in too high of esteem. I looked down on you and you looked up at me and we’ve both suffered. Now we need to figure out how to meet in the middle. I’m not some golden idol.”

He called her hechicera and gorgeous and sweetheart and baby girl, but she’d never called him anything but Nicky. It was his favorite love spell.

Loving him had been as effortless and comforting as her magic. No wonder she hadn’t recognized it.

“I don’t need you tending me like I’m a painting to be admired or a relic to be worshipped. I tried to be an ideal and look where that got me. It kept me married to a narcissist for ten years. The last thing I want to be is an ideal.”

“I didn’t always hide this from you, Thomas,” she said, louder, hearing La Llorona’s sadness, yes, but also hearing her anger. Her outrage. Her desire to punish. “Anyone else would have noticed the candles left out, the incense in our room. But you never cared to see me clearly.”

Author’s Note: I was a good girl and a good student who believed what the history books told me. That belief meant that, although I attended grade school and high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I didn’t learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre until my thirties. So when I read about the Hull Baby case in the History of Montgomery County, By Its Own People, published in 1903, a book about my home county that begins with the sentence, The history of Montgomery county reveals this locality as the spot where the Osage Indian made his last stand before the white man’s advance in spreading civilization over the plains of Kansas, I finally knew to be suspicious.

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