I have been obsessed with the Hamelton soundtrack. There I said it. My student’s swayed me at the end of the school year and I’ve been enamored ever since.

Alex & Eliza seemed like a perfect opportunity to live in my Hamelton bubble a little longer. While much more innocent, a bit slower, and wrought with against, I enjoyed this book a lot. It takes its own liberties with Hamelton’s story (as does the Hamelton play) and I think they enhance the story De La Cruz tells. What I can appreciate more than anything, De La Cruz is telling a different story. One all her own. Eliza is a main Character in this book, half the story told through her eyes, the other half through Alexander’s. This is a story about love above all other things. While Hamelton, the musical, was about so much more than just their love.

I’m confident the characters are not teenagers (historically speaking they were not around this time) the book feels like a YA. I believe it is a YA but more than whether or not it is, it feels like one. Some books don’t. That being said, it’s a surface story. A bit lighter than I wanted. I wanted more. I wanted more detail, more history, just more.

I have a love for Melissa De La Cruz and it has not changed. This book wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, but I struggled to put it down all the same.