Hate to Love You, by Elise Alden - Review

Information
Title: Hate to Love You
Author: Elise Alden
Publisher:  Carina Press
Release Date: June 2, 2014
Reviewing: ebook, complimentary at RT14.
Reason for reading: a fair amount of buzz.

The Short Answer 
At the risk of being overly cutesy: I hated to love it.  And I mean that.

The Blurb (from Amazon)

Despite my slutty reputation, I was technically a virgin at eighteen. But it turns out all those sex-ed teachers aren't just trying to scare you. The faint positive on a budget pregnancy test sent me spinning, moments before meeting my sister's snooty new fiancé.

Shaking hands with upper-crusty James was like downing a triple shot of vodka. Dizzy with desire, confused by my body's reaction, and shocked by the possessiveness flashing in his eyes, I deceived him that night and told the world at their wedding reception.

The truth?

I slept with my sister's fiancé. Hot and sweaty, all night long in a room so dark he couldn't tell I wasn't her.

The lie?

Said fiancé is the father of my child. The one I signed over my rights to just before he was born.

That was seven years ago.

It's time to come clean.

The Whole Scoop
This book started out pretty much totally unlikeable for me. I thought the premise was gimmicky and the heroine is a train wreck, with a crude vocabulary and a cruder life.  I almost gave up on it in the first chapter when Paisley found it necessary to explain to me about her extraordinary nipples:

I've got to tell you about those little suckers.  I am cursed with the longest nipples in the world.  Even Marcia says so, and she's seen them in all shapes and sizes at the hospital. Mine are ginormously freakish. They sit on a large circle of dark pink and just wait for me to brush against something or get cold or...

I looked at James.

Aroused.

I don't know if this was supposed to be funny or what, but I found it off-putting. In fact, I found Paisley's whole character off-putting.

But then it turned out, that was kind of the point.  I got just enough of a glimpse of Paisley's vulnerability to keep me engaged through the serious train wreck of Part 1. Similarly, James was snide and condescending and generally awful, but then he would do or say something with a genuine kindness that made me willing to stay on for just a few more pages.

OK, so then part 2 seems promising -- Paisley has managed to get her act together; gotten away from her toxic family and carved out a profession for herself. She's back in London, and wants to be a part of her son's life.

And then I have another headbanging moment, where she applies for a job at James' place of work, under a different name, and, just, SERIOUSLY WHO DOES THAT? AUUGGHH.  I didn't like this plan at all.

But somewhere in here, the story and characters started to turn around for me. It is partly because the author feeds us Paisley's backstory in just the right way that it doesn't feel like excuse-making, but it feels like a maturation, for us as readers, in the same way that Paisley matures and begins to cope with it. But even more so, I think it was the kindness in James than anything else, and I know I've said that before. But when Paisley came back and had her act mostly cleaned up, it was easier for him to be kind to her.  And for all the crudeness and wrongness of their first hook-up, their chemistry is ELECTRIC, to mix a metaphor, and the author pulls off the lightning-strike magnitude of their attraction. 

The best thing about this romance is that we have some of the most imperfect non-vampire characters EVAR, with shipping-container-sized baggage, and they work through it. And win.

And that is a well-earned Happily Ever After.

Around the Blogosphere
Dear Author (oo, Jane does not agree with me at all)
Maryse's Book Blog
Harlequin Junkie
Britt's Book & Life Blog


PS: Okay, I just cannot NOT say this, even though it doesn't fit anywhere in the flow of the review.  PAISLEY IS A MIND READER.  That's right. If she can look you in the eyes, she can READ YOUR MIND. Except when she can't, which happened at times with James, for no apparent reason. (Also, HE CAN READ HER MIND TOO. It was not clear whether he could read everyone's mind, or just hers.)  This element of the book was, in my humble opinion, COMPLETELY STUPID AND THE WORST THING. If I gave starred ratings, I would knock off an entire star because this is so stupid. It made it much much harder to take the story seriously. Please don't let this ever happen again. 

Summer Soup

Does your scheduling go all to hell in the summer? Mine sure does...

Soup Dish:  book people are talking about...
✽Amazon vs. Hachette. You don't need me to tell you about this; everyone is talking about it. I see this as another spasm in the death-throes of the 20th-century publishing model. Everyone involved in this industry is going to see their role adapt or die... or get lucky.  I think for a time, readers may be winners, but if Amazon is allowed to become a monopoly, that won't serve anyone well.  Yet no one is stepping up as a serious competitor in the ebook arena.  Why is that? I love my Kindle, and I love how easy it is to access thousands or even millions of books through Amazon...

BUT, on the other hand, I have music that I have purchased in 4 different formats (wax, cassette, CD, mp3...) and I refuse to do that with books. If a second format is required, it will be paper, and I won't require a device to read it.  More likely, since we're talking about text, people will find a way to strip off the DRM and import it onto any basic text reader.  I have zero ethical qualms about that, regardless of what it says in the fine print about my rights to read it on other devices or media, particularly if Amazon or anyone else feels that device lock-in is a good way to get me to pay for the same work multiple times.  No. I'm not talking about making dozens of copies or sharing more than I would a physical book, but I feel that if I've bought the book, I should be able to read it on whatever media I want to.


What I'm reading
Yeesh, it's been a long time since I've recapped my reading.  Two months! That's a lot of books. I think I'll stick to the highlights.

✽Most recently, I just finished First to Burn, by Anna Richland and liked it very much. I met Ms. Richland at RT and ended up sitting next to her on the flight home from DFW to Seattle. I'm afraid I may have distracted her a bit from the editing she was supposed to be doing on the second book in the series. The series features a cadre of warriors who were accidentally immortalized while fighting the Grendel alongside Beowulf.  Although I found the paranormal aspect of the worldbuilding to start a little bit slowly, the really unique bit of this book is that the hero is a military Special Forces officer, and a large part of the story takes place while the main characters are deployed in Afghanistan.  Ms. Richland writes about military life with authenticity and a great ear for the dialog.

✽Another RT introduction landed me with the book Stone Guardian, by Danielle Monsch. The premise is that an apocalyptic event crashes multiple dimensions together, allowing supernatural and magical creatures access to our world, with a lot of scary violence ensuing. I enjoyed the world-building quite a lot but I had a little trouble connecting with the characters, particularly the heroine. She vacillated between super-sweet and sarcastic wise-cracking, which felt inconsistent to me and undermined the romantic chemistry. I may at least sample the next one though because I do find the world intriguing.

✽A lot of people have been talking about Laura Florand, so I decided to give her a try. I thought the books were overpriced, so I managed to get a copy of The Chocolate Thief through the library. I suspect the main attraction of Florand's work must be the sensual way she writes about chocolate, because that really is wonderful, and her writing overall is perfectly fine. However, I didn't like her characters at all.  The author shows us the hero's vulnerabilities, but instead of endearing him to me he just seemed both pompous and insecure. But the heroine was much worse. A poor little rich girl, her life's dream is to expand the family's mass-produced chocolate dynasty (think the Hershey family) with a line of exclusive high end gourmet chocolate. Although the author attempts to convince us that she's a business genius, her meeting and approach with the hero-- the best chocolatier in Paris, and therefore the world- are completely ridiculous. We are then apparently supposed to feel sorry for the spoiled wealthy heiress who didn't get what she wanted. I DNF'd it.  Also, not for nothing, but it was almost impossible for me to figure out the reading order for this series.  Aggravating.

✽I'd been meaning to try Jade Lee ever since RT12, because she was such a great personality.  It took me awhile to get around to it, but I finally downloaded and read The Devil's Bargain.  I did finish this one, but I struggled tremendously with the premise. I pretty much hated it.  The hero is a viscount who has fallen on hard times, and hits upon the thoroughly disgusting scheme of pimping destitute women into the marriage market. More specifically, the market as a second (or third, or whatever) bride to an elderly, wealthy man who would like to have a well-trained hooker/wife available, now that his duty to God and country is done.  In some ways, it's rationalizable: these are women who would be left in desperate circumstances.  The viscount arranges for a marriage settlement and provides a "guaranteed product" to the grooms.  He knows the vices of the grooms in question and will not "do business" with the more depraved. However, the training of the young women, while falling short of actually divesting them of their virginity, was humiliating and degrading and I just could not get over my ICK factor.  Surprisingly, I did like the way the twist resolved the seemingly irreconcilable black moment. I would try a different book by this author but it would depend on the premise.

✽So after a couple of these disappointing reads, I thought Sarah Mayberry might be the antidote I was looking for. I started The Other Side of Us on the plane to RT14, and happily, I was right. I really liked that both characters were at a point in their lives where a romantic entanglement was just a really, really terrible idea-- him VERY fresh from divorce, and she recovering physically from a bad car accident. If you were best friends with either of these people, you'd be telling them, "sure, have some fun, but this is not the moment to get serious!"  Great chemistry; resonant, three-dimensional characters; and grown-up (but not perfect) emotional give and take. Strong recommend.

That's about a third of the books I've read since the last update, but it seems like a good stopping place.  Hopefully I can get back on track with more regular Sunday Soups.  RT14 really did inspire me to keep on blogging, and I'm going to try to get back to reviewing too.  I have some thoughts about the upcoming Loretta Chase book and I'm working through the biggest #wtf book I've read in a while; also known as Hate to Love You by Elise Alden. Angela James of Carina Press called it a "divisive" book at RT and I can see why. It just kind of begs to be talked about.