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A review by indiekay
Amor Actually by Adriana Herrera, Sabrina Sol, Diana Muñoz Stewart, Alexis Daria, Zoey Castile, Mia Sosa, Priscilla Oliveras
5.0
Holiday Romance Readathon 2023: 9
4.5 stars | NetGalley ARC
I really enjoyed this. There were some stories near the beginning I wasn't a fan of - I always feel like the first story in an anthology should set the tone for the rest of them, and this one really missed the mark on that. The first story is like 70% sex scene - and a kind of cringey sex scene at that - and I was worried the entire book would just be stories where the romance is extremely rushed followed by mediocre and long sex scenes, BUT luckily that wasn't the case. Don't get me wrong, I love a good sex scene - but I HATE a bad one, and I'd rather have a good closed-door sex scene than a bad explicit one. There's different amounts of spice level throughout the book, and a few of the love stories are very rushed, but there's some nice variety in how many sex scenes you have to sit through, as well as there being 2 f/f romances and 2 f/m/m stories (and 5 m/f stories).
This book is a play on the film Love Actually and some of the stories take plot points from the movie and spin it in new fun ways (for example, Love in Spanglish by Zoey Castile plays on Colin Firth's plot line in the film where a struggling writer goes on a retreat to a secluded house and falls for someone that works there, but they have a language barrier). One of the critiques that Love Actually has gotten since it came out is that a lot of the women in it don't actually have any agency over their lives and are just props for the men in the stories, and this book uses some of the ideas from Love Actually and gives the characters agency (except for Only Yours by Sabrina Sol - which I had kind of liked as a concept, but after finishing it realised the love interest had zero agency in the story and she barely even had any dialogue either, so she really just felt like a prop to the male main character's story).
I also liked how the whole story came together in the end. My favourite stories were probably All I Want for Nochebuena by Alexis Daria (shocking that the story with two adult film stars in it had less sex than the first story); Love in Spanglish by Zoey Castile; and To Us, You Are Perfect by Alexis Daria & Adriana Herrera.
In terms of the audiobook, I was not a fan of the female narrator -her voice was just a bit too perky for my tastes, so I felt like I was being advertised to/listening to that generated TikTok voice the entire time, which really grated on me during sex scenes especially. The male narrator did a good job, but he has way less scenes than the female narrator did.
Also, shout out to the illustrator of the cover, because the cover is GORGEOUS.
4.5 stars | NetGalley ARC
I really enjoyed this. There were some stories near the beginning I wasn't a fan of - I always feel like the first story in an anthology should set the tone for the rest of them, and this one really missed the mark on that. The first story is like 70% sex scene - and a kind of cringey sex scene at that - and I was worried the entire book would just be stories where the romance is extremely rushed followed by mediocre and long sex scenes, BUT luckily that wasn't the case. Don't get me wrong, I love a good sex scene - but I HATE a bad one, and I'd rather have a good closed-door sex scene than a bad explicit one. There's different amounts of spice level throughout the book, and a few of the love stories are very rushed, but there's some nice variety in how many sex scenes you have to sit through, as well as there being 2 f/f romances and 2 f/m/m stories (and 5 m/f stories).
This book is a play on the film Love Actually and some of the stories take plot points from the movie and spin it in new fun ways (for example, Love in Spanglish by Zoey Castile plays on Colin Firth's plot line in the film where a struggling writer goes on a retreat to a secluded house and falls for someone that works there, but they have a language barrier). One of the critiques that Love Actually has gotten since it came out is that a lot of the women in it don't actually have any agency over their lives and are just props for the men in the stories, and this book uses some of the ideas from Love Actually and gives the characters agency (except for Only Yours by Sabrina Sol - which I had kind of liked as a concept, but after finishing it realised the love interest had zero agency in the story and she barely even had any dialogue either, so she really just felt like a prop to the male main character's story).
I also liked how the whole story came together in the end. My favourite stories were probably All I Want for Nochebuena by Alexis Daria (shocking that the story with two adult film stars in it had less sex than the first story); Love in Spanglish by Zoey Castile; and To Us, You Are Perfect by Alexis Daria & Adriana Herrera.
In terms of the audiobook, I was not a fan of the female narrator -her voice was just a bit too perky for my tastes, so I felt like I was being advertised to/listening to that generated TikTok voice the entire time, which really grated on me during sex scenes especially. The male narrator did a good job, but he has way less scenes than the female narrator did.
Also, shout out to the illustrator of the cover, because the cover is GORGEOUS.