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perpetualpages's review
challenging
funny
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
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.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexism and Violence
Minor: Fatphobia and Sexual content
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