Hate to Want You

honestly just picked this up because i once read a fanfic with the exact same plot and loved it.
that being said... the fanfic was better

Read my complete review at https://novelsalive.com/2023/04/05/3-5-star-review-hate-to-want-you-by-julia-jarrett/

3.5 stars

I struggled with a rating for this one as some parts really worked for me and other parts just didn't.

I liked the background of the two families, their relationships and eventual fall out. The grandfather and aunt were lovely and had some touching moments. I also really liked Livvy as a character, but really didn't get on with Nicholas. There was just something about him that annoyed me, some times he was like a robot and others was over the top.

I listened to this one on audio and enjoyed the dual narration, so if I continue I'll keep listening to them as they're a fairly easy listen.

This one is... good, but I just never felt gripped by it– I wasn't hooked. I'm not sure if it was my mood of the day or what.
I'll definitely try the next one... hopefully I'm more into it.

I downloaded this to read on vacation on the beach in south Texas, and whoowhee it was dang humid and this book was STEAMY! It took me a little while to get into these characters - the families that are feuding are pretty complicated, there's a lot of characters, and it took me a bit to figure out who was who and their assorted relationships. It took a little while to get off the ground.

Livvy is pretty well-drawn but Nicholas is a little one-dimensional. I never really got a sense of why these two were still so hung up each other after a decade of being apart in different cities; he had dumped her after his mother and her father had died in a car crash, the implication being that the two of them were having an affair, resulting in Nicholas' father buying Livvy's mother's half of the business away from her family and leaving the two families estranged, and Livvy heading out of town to get away from everyone.

While I didn't love the two main characters together, I did love the family and business aspects, of how this break between two inseparable families resulted in devastation for both of them, and the idea of coming home to make amends and get closure however you can. I did like Nicholas' big romantic gesture at the end, but I also liked how Livvy was able to stand up for herself and say, we'll see how this goes when we hit a rough patch if you really want to give this a go - all is not forgotten. I also loved the showing of the earlier family relationships, the trust between the two grandfathers as Livvy's family was Japanese-American and Nicholas' grandfather's family protected their assets when they were forced into internment. I thought Brendan was an excellent Bad Dude, believable and terrible.

I loved that this was my first romance novel with a tattooed heroine who is also a tattoo artist and how normal that felt (as someone who doesn't have any tattoos but would like one but is kind of scared), and I love that Matt now tries to guess the end of my romance novels. (Nicholas doesn't get a tattoo, so I win! Matt says I win on a technicality only because the point is that Nicholas is going to eventually, but he didn't read the book, so nyehhh.)

A solid 3.5 Lots of things to love about this, but ultimately I thought the family story was stronger and more compelling than the romance.

Enjoyable romance

This was a slow starter for me (like most contemporaries seem to be, for some reason), but once it got going, I was all in. Loved the MC and the side characters, who all felt realistic and well-drawn, even if they didn't get a lot of time - particular favorites are Sadia and Aunt Maile. Effortlessly diverse with a truly compelling plot. Loved the representation of mental illness/depression. I'm stopping by the library today to get the next book in this series, and I'm probably gonna try to read Rai's back catalog after that. I'm not a huge contemporary reader but this is a standout. And, um, not for nothing, but this book had some of the best sex scenes I've read - especially the first one, goddamn.

All my nights...

I love Alisha Rai's stories! Her characters are vivid and imperfect and feel like real people. Nico and Livvy's family drama provided an interesting backdrop for their journey back to each other.

Branching out of literary fiction and thrillers thanks to my Book Riot pals! Really enjoyed this book and all its diverse characters, along with likable and semi-relatable female characters.