Entertainment Weekly and Fated Mates choose AFTER HOURS as top 10 romance of 2022

When I sat down to writer After Hours on Milagro Street, I knew I was writing a book about my people, my family, and a community that had formed me, a community that I admired and valued for the strengths it has given me. I wanted others to see those strengths, as well.

So, you know, no pressure.

As I began to pull the book together, I realized I had a lot of threads: a love story, small town, lost history, a big family, being Mexican-American in the U.S., love for bars and hospitality, strong women, a ghost, and what I hope is my signature high heat. Looking at all those threads while I was drafting, I prayed I would be able to pull them together in an impactful way that allowed me to share the honor and love I have for my community and the romance genre with readers.

For these reasons, making these top 10 romance of 2022 lists is powerfully meaningful.

In the last two weeks, both Entertainment Weekly and the Fated Mates podcast have named After Hours on Milagro Street one of their favorite romance books of 2022. The Washington Post gave the book the honor the week before.

Senior entertainment writer Maureen Lee Lenker said:

Amidst some of the hottest love scenes put to paper this year, Angelina M. Lopez interrogates big subjects like gentrification, assimilation, and what calling yourself an "American" really means. Her vibrant story of the ways that love, acceptance, and kinship can weave together in a tapestry with the threads of work that undoes erasure is both powerful and swoon-worthy.

Lenker gave it an A+ and five flames for hotness in a review this summer. Joining After Hours on the list are books from Adriana Herrera, Christina Lauren, Kennedy Ryan, Alexis Hall, Sarah MacLean and others.

Speaking of New York Times-bestselling romance author Sarah MacLean, I was beyond thrilled when she called After Hours on Milagro Street “one of my very favorite books of the year.” Sarah hosts the popular romance podcast Fated Mates along with book critic Jen Prokop and is a fantastic advocate of romance. I have one quote on my wall and it’s from Sarah.

She called a certain scene in After Hours on Milagro Street “incendiary” and called me the “reigning queen of bad-ass-slash-possible unlikeable heroines.” I will wear that crown proudly!

One of my very favorite books of the year is After Hours on Milagro Street, the most recent book by Angelina M. Lopez, who’ve we’ve talked about before because I actually think she is the resigning queen of the bad-ass/possibly unlikeable heroine… You guys, this is, bar none, one of the best contemporaries of the year and I’m so excited for you all to read it.

Thank you to every reader and reviewer who told their community to read this book. My community thanks you!

Entertainment Weekly gives AFTER HOURS ON MILAGRO STREET A+ review

Through the majority of my life, I didn’t seek to see myself — a brown-skinned Mexican-American female — represented in the media I consumed. Not seeing me was such a norm that I accepted it as a norm.

The same was true for the romance novels I devoured. I never questioned why there were no Latina heroines or books set in Latinx communities and cultures from Latina authors. It was just media as I expected it. I long held the dream to be a romance writer, but I expected to write white heroines under a pen name.

(There were a few Latinx romance books by Latina authors, usually shoved aside, separate from the other romance novels, as if readers who understood the stories of 14th-century Scottish highlanders and 18th-century pirates couldn’t possibly understand the love stories of modern-day Latinos.)

It took other people, younger people, to make me realize how horrifying and absurd all this was.

So, when I was first tapping out the details of what would become my debut novel, Lush Money, about a self-made billionaire businesswoman, back in 2015, I immediately backed up and defined her as a self-made Mexican-American billionaire businesswoman. Because, although I was new to the awareness, I was already tired of not seeing me and women like me represented.

Which makes the A+ review from Entertainment Weekly for After Hours on Milagro Street that much more glorious:

Inspired by her own upbringing as a Mexican American in Kansas, Lopez offers a steamy love story that is also a repudiation of whitewashing history for the sake of upholding narrow definitions of what it is to be American.

This phenomenal review from Maureen Lee Lenker, senior editor at Entertainment Weekly, underlines how the lived perspective I was able to share as a Latina author enhanced this high-heat, bonkers, steamy, escapist love story.

After Hours on Milagro Street is about not only uncovering forgotten (or deliberately obscured) histories, it's about restoring the narrative of our collective past and the contributions of a rich tapestry of peoples whose story is often reduced or erased altogether.

That bit — whose story is often reduced or erased altogether — really got me. In recent weeks, a light has been shined on popular white authors who write Latinx characters in derogatory ways. The argument has always been, “Shouldn’t writers be able to write whatever they want?”

Yes. Shouldn’t writers of color have been able to write whatever they want and get the same placement, support, and publishing dollars as white authors? Yes. But we all know that that is not how the world has worked. What we’re asking for now — since equality does not exist — is equity. We’re asking for white authors to allow us to tell our stories, and for publishing to support us in that endeavor.

As Maureen Lee Lenker states in her review: Romance is almost always an inherently political genre in the ways it asserts its messages about sexuality, pleasure, power dynamics, and more.

But Lopez raises that to the next level, making a profound statement about being an American amid absolutely mind-blowing sex scenes. It's her ability to balance these lascivious passages with pointed, meaningful storytelling that sets her work apart and makes her a writer worth returning to again and again.

Put this on my tombstone. Ink it on my skin.

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!!

HATE CRUSH Gets Amazing Review in Entertainment Weekly

So I was pretty knocked out when my little debut novel, Lush Money, got an incredible review in Entertainment Weekly.

But this morning, when I discovered Hate Crush also got a stellar review, I sobbed.

It’s common knowledge in the industry that sophomore efforts are hard and first books written under contract feel like they will break you. I felt like a fraud through much of the writing of Hate Crush, my second book, and when I got it back from my editor for revisions, I re-wrote 50,000 words in 30 days.

Yep.

The only value was — during those 30 days — I felt like I finally knew Sofia and Aish. I finally understood their motivations, innately understood how they would react and behave. By the end of that 30 days, just before Christmas of 2019, I felt like I’d saved Hate Crush. I loved Sofia and Aish and I believed that I’d done them justice. I just wasn’t sure if readers would feel the same.

In a note from my editor after she read those revisions, she said, “This is a beautiful, breathless read.” I believed her. But when my first review for Hate Crush was a mean, 1-star review (a review that the reviewer made sure to post everywhere), I was sure my career was over.

I was sure I’d been right earlier: I was a fraud. The fact that this happened right in the beginning of the pandemic, right when I was in the thick of writing Serving Sin, and planning a stressful move halfway across the country didn’t help my mental state!

So when I say this review means a lot, this review means A LOT!!!

Read an excerpt below and click to read full review…

Hot Stuff: June romances embrace the inherent sexiness of faking it

by Maureen Lee Lenker

Angelina M. Lopez continues her sinfully delicious Filthy Rich series with a second novel that elevates her ability to blend soapy drama with steamy bedroom scenes and gut-wrenching emotion….The two are exquisite character studies: Sofia, a fierce leader of her people, driven by her yearning to feel needed, and Aish, a cocky, dissolute rock star who has to learn to respect the boundaries of the woman he loves. Lopez soaks readers in the heat of their attraction, the palpable tension of the sweep of Sofia’s chic haircut and the inexorable pull of Aish’s lean, tattooed body and cut-glass cheekbones. Her writing thrums with desire, while still delivering knockout twists and turns. Lopez keeps readers gasping with shock and pleasure in equal measure. If her debut Lush Money was exhilarating and heartfelt, Hate Crush is even more engrossing... (Click to keep reading.)

LUSH MONEY Gets Stellar Review in Entertainment Weekly

I was beyond thrilled this week to discover that Lush Money got an incredible review in Entertainment Weekly.

Lopez’s gift is her ability to push the characters and their bedroom antics to extremes without ever losing the intense heat and lush romanticism of her writing. There’s a definitive old-school flavor to the narrative, but Lopez punches it up with modernity time and time again, allowing readers to indulge in the throwback vibes without ever having to sacrifice evolving ideals of enthusiastic consent and the sacred HEA.

I started writing when showing up in Entertainment Weekly — or The New York Times, the Washington Post, or on NPR — wouldn’t have even been a possibility except for the standard Valentine’s Day article. Now, all of those outlets have romance reviewers and are actively taking an interest in the genre.

Read an excerpt below and click to read full review…

Hot Stuff: Five new romance novels are all about second chances

by Maureen Lee Lenker

Angelina M. Lopez makes her publishing debut with a romance novel that combines the soapy deliciousness of a telenovela with all the old-school romance feels you could ever want. As a Latinx CEO with a past she’d prefer stay secret, Roxanne Medina has clawed her way to the top of the boardroom – so when it comes to crafting the ending to the perfect fairy-ttale image she’s chosen to project, it makes sense to rope the prince of a Spanish principality into a marriage contract that grants him time with her three nights a month in the hopes she’ll bear a royal baby. But Príncipe Mateo Ferdinand Juan Carlos de Esperanza y Santo is more preoccupied with perfecting his new vine that he hopes will restore prosperity to his wine-growing nation, and he’s not about to willingly have a baby with a stranger…(Click to keep reading.)