New Latine Books to Read This Spring

The premise of Mia Sosa’s latest romance was an instant yes for me. It’s not just because the host and I have the same name. Vanessa Cordero’s very lucrative side hustle is to date people she likes and make their lives miserable – she’ll be clingy, jealous, and mean to their parents, and she’ll do anything to make her clients look pretty damn attractive in comparison. Her sister is in love with a woman who is certified as a commitment phobe (looking for fake girlfriends to appease her mother) and begs Vanessa to take on one last job. Her instructions are clear. Lisa wants her to go on a date with Jason and scare him into running to her, and not to touch or fool around with him during the mission. The problem is, no matter how hard Vanessa tries, she can’t seem to shake the man off.

Estela Morales has just started her senior year at San Francisco’s most exclusive public high school, where she is one of the few Latina girls to pass the exam. All she wants is to graduate and get into her dream university. It means bowing your head and letting your racist Spanish teacher give you a passing grade. But the “bowing” part goes off the rails when Estela comes second to a non-Latino student in a Latin Heritage Poetry Contest, thrusting her into the spotlight amid a citywide debate. As her home life falls apart and she begins a new romance, she clings to poetry as the situation unfolds. This debut novel is told in both poetry and prose and has been compared to the great Elizabeth Acevedo.

You may know Laura Taylor Namey as the author of the following books: library of lost things and Tea and Tomorrow Guide for Cuban Girls (Personal favorite). In this romantic YA ghost story, Sylvie Castellanos wants adventure, but like every year, she spends her summer with her Aunt Viv while her friends are on vacation and her parents are working on a luxury yacht. While thrifting, she finds an expensive vintage watch worth a large sum of cash, which feels like a sign of good fortune. But when she turns the clock face, it summons the boy’s ghost. The boy’s death is a mystery to be solved.

I mentioned this book a few weeks ago in an article about Afro-Latinx authors, and I’d like to mention it again here. This book will no longer be published next week. Papi Ramon is the recently deceased patriarch of a wealthy family who sows some mild confusion in his last will. It was revealed that a member of the family had made a deal with a demon in the past, and that they needed to make a big fuss to exorcise the demon, or they would be cursed. No one takes it seriously except his undisputed favorite, Xiomara. But when the remaining family sends out a lawyer to retrieve the original will, as you surely know, a storm hits and the whole family is stranded together. Over the course of 12 harrowing hours, all hell breaks loose. It’s up to Xiomara to find and eliminate the demon.

Roxy and Meri are opposites in every way and can’t stand each other’s faces. And their parents just got engaged. the marriage can’t do it It happens, not if they say anything about it! So the two team up and devise a plan to prove to their parents that they are in fact incompatible by sabotaging renovations to the house they plan to share. What could go wrong? I love this flavor of hijinks and can’t wait to read this middle grade story from two amazing authors.