Unlike the rest of the world, I have not yet jumped on the Hamilton bandwagon. I mean, sure, I’m interested. And Broadway’s only a quick train ride away. But every time I’ve looked into getting tickets, they’re sold out and I get discouraged. What I’m getting at here is that I went into Alex and Eliza with pretty much zero expectations. And although it had a pretty slow start, by the time we hit about 25%, I could hardly put it down.
This is, of course, a YA retelling of the romance between Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler. De la Cruz herself mentions that there is little documentation of their relationship, but it has been documented that they fell hard and fast for each other, and of course, were married. This means that de la Cruz had to take some creative liberties with her characters, and since I know little about Hamilton aside from what I learned in history class, this didn’t bother me at all. I’m not sure which of the events in this book were real and which were made up, but it doesn’t really matter. This isn’t a history book. It’s a YA love story, and a really cute one, at that.
Throughout the book, we get to hear what’s going on from both Alex and Eliza’s POV. I loved both characters, but Alex, in particular, really grew on me. I’m not sure if he was this precious cinnamon roll in real life, but I just wanted to scoop him up and protect him. Yes, yes, I know, he was a powerful aide to George Washington. Whatever. Book Alex needs to be protected at all costs.
This is my first book by Melissa de la Cruz, and I was not disappointed. While I don’t think I’m going to run out and purchase her entire backlist, I’ll definitely keep an eye out for more of her books.
Final rating: ★★★★☆
The Bibliophagist 