Title: Flirting with Fate
Author: J.C. Cervantes (pen name of Jennifer Cervantes)
Genre: YA, contemporary romance
Publication date: April 2022
Published by: Razorbill
Source: Borrowed from library
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Synopsis: Ava Granados will never forgive herself for being late to her beloved nana's deathbed. But due to a flash flood that left Ava in a fender bender with a mysterious boy, she missed her grandmother's mystical blessing—one that has been passed between the women of her family upon death for generations.
Then Nana's ghost appears with a challenge from beyond the grave. As it turns out, Nana did give Ava a blessing, but it missed its target, landing with the boy from the night of the storm instead. Was it fate? Ava refuses to believe so. With the help of her sisters and Nana's rather bumbling spiritual guide, she's determined to reclaim her share of the family magic and set Nana free.
For guarded Ava, befriending some random boy is the last thing she wants to do. She's gotten along just fine protecting her heart--keeping people at a distance is a great way to ensure no one ever hurts you. But as Ava embarks on her mission to retrieve the lost blessing, she starts to wonder if getting close to thunderstorm boy is worth the risk.
On July 7 at precisely 9:01 p.m., a boundless, unforeseen storm claimed one life, two hearts, and six destinies.
I don’t read a lot of contemporaries but this book had a lot of different things that really appealed to me: first of all, it had a little bit of a supernatural twist with Nana passing on gifts to her granddaughters upon her death.
All the women in the Granados family had this keen, odd, otherworldly ability to pass along blessings to their female descendants. But here was the catch: they could only do so from their deathbeds.
Second, they’re a Hispanic family! And the book is written by a POC author! As a POC myself, I don’t read nearly enough books by POC authors as I would like, so it’s always a treat when I find something that really intrigues me. Such as this book! And I ended up really enjoying it! It was SO cute!
So, like I mentioned, Ava and her sisters were to receive a mystical blessing from their grandmother, but only the moment she was about to die. This was one of my favorite aspects of the book! It was just such a creative and fun idea!
Blessings weren’t superpowers. They were enhancements, keys to dreams, and “destinies.”
Ava’s sister Viv got the blessing of, basically, persuasion, and Carmen got a photographic memory. As for Ava? Well, she got nothing because when she heard the news that her grandmother was dying, in the middle of a storm, she rushed to her side but got in a fender bender before she could see her grandmother before she died. And her gift? It was accidentally passed on to the boy she got in the accident with.
The family very much cared for one another, but I’m not gonna lie, it really felt like Ava’s older sisters really only cared about the blessing. Ava though, it was nice to see that for her it wasn’t all about the gift. She wanted the blessing more so because then she would have a part of Nana with her.
That was another thing I loved about this book: how family-centric it was. Yes, this was a contemporary romance, but it also had a lot of focus on family, between the girls and their grandmother, and the girls themselves. I really loved their relationship and how close they were. How they could count on one another for anything, no matter what. Carmen even considered murder for the briefest second to get Ava’s blessing back 😂 I loved it!
Speaking of romance, that was another thing I liked about this. It was so cute! I really liked how in order for Ava to get her blessing back from Rion, she would need to befriend him first, so this was kinda an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers situation, which I enjoyed. It was so fun following them and seeing them get to know one another and slowly start to develop that maybe more-than-friends feelings.
This was just so cute! I really enjoyed it and definitely recommend it! It was not as romance-y as I was expecting, which is not a bad thing at all! I liked that Ava and her relationship with her family played a big role. I loved the whole thing with the blessing and following Ava on her journey to get it back. I enjoyed seeing her relationship with Rion develop, especially since he was such a sweetheart! And then there was this mind-blowing plot twist at the end that I did not see coming at all!
Everything just came together so nicely at the end! Talk about fate.
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