They Hate Each Other is so me coded!

 

Do you ever see a book and get interested in it? And then do you ever read the blurb, or synopsis, and then realise you’ve just picked up a book that might be the most you-coded book? That happened for me with They Hate Each Other by Amanda Woody.

The blurbs says that Jonah Collins and Dylan Ramirez hate each other. Jonas views Dylan as a spoiled, arrogant golden boy, whilst Dylan thinks Jonah is an attention-seeking show-off who never shuts his mouth. Their friends are convinced Jonah and Dylan’s mutual disdain is just thinly veiled lust – a rumour that surges like wildfire when they wake up together in one bed after homecoming. Horrified, the pair agree to use the faux pas to their advantage: they decide to keep up the fake dating ruse, then end their “relationship” in a massive staged fight, proving their incompatibility once and for all. But the more time they spend together, the more they begin to question their true feelings. Could there be a fine line between love and hate after all?

Now I am nothing if not a whore for the fake dating trope. It is my all-time favourite romance trope I think and if a romance book revolves around it then there’s a good chance I’m going to read it.

Also, there’s a content notice in the front of this book, so I’ll share the list here: Alcoholism in a parent; recurring theme of child neglect; multiple instances of underage drinking; a character copes with PTSD and panic attacks; multiple mentions of eating habits and body image; a minor is sexually harassed by his employer (not graphic); use of abrasive language and explicit sexual language/innuendos; discussion of physical abuse (some flashes in nightmares/invasive images). That whole list is in the book, again, so I just wanted to share it.

The book opens on a party happening in Dylan’s house that he’s not happy about. He and his friend, Hanna, only invited a handful of people, yet half the class turned up. Dylan ends up kicking Jonah out so he can sober up, and Hanna manages to kick basically everyone, except Jonah and his friend, Andre, out the house. The vibe you get, since we start in Dylan’s POV is that he’s just trying to make sure his house doesn’t fall apart, and that Jonah has such an easy life because everyone seems to follow his lead. But then the second chapter flits over to Jonah’s POV and he wakes up wishing he could be someone who wakes up and sees sunshine like on the Disney Channel. I will say, even from his own POV, Jonah seems very annoying, but given the list of a content notice, I assumed that he was probably compensating for something. He does mention that he thinks Dylan steals everything from him, but he’s forced to be civil with him because Hanna and Andre are in a relationship. Then you see, a little further into the book, what it is that Jonah is compensating for and about how rough his life at home is – how he’s basically solely taking care of his two little sisters and working illegal hours at work just to keep the family afloat.

One thing that I love that just inherently comes with the fake dating trope is that, when it’s done well, the characters that are fake dating are forced to spend time together and get to know each other. As basic as an observation that is, I loved how it was done in this book. You see both Jonah and Dylan let down their walls with each other, sometimes not out of choice, yet still holding that hostility with each other until things slowly break. In that, whether they want to or not, you see the two of them letting each other in, almost in a literal sense. With Jonah, since he very much the type that was providing for his family, he slowly lets Dylan, again in the literal sense, in. Like into his house, lets him get to know his sisters, things like that.

I can’t lie, this book definitely did make me a bit emotional. It was nice to see a character of a family member who wasn’t there, or around, to be an actual half-decent person. I feel like so often you see them as the villain, or as the character who just wants something to tear down the main characters, but that really wasn’t the case for Ms. Davis, Jonah’s aunt. It’s a sad reality when I feel like I shouldn’t have to read the line “you’re a seventeen-year-old-boy… you shouldn’t have to earn food”. Like, that is mad.

I do think it maybe went on a little long towards the end. Like I think specifically the last 30 pages or so, while nice to read, could have been removed. Or maybe not removed but rebranded as an epilogue as they had nothing to do with the actual plot lines that were going on in the book. It was sort of like we had the plot lines, the plot lines getting resolved, but then an additional 30/40 pages at the end of the book that was nothing but fluff. I will say, in the sense of them being almost unnecessary, a lot of it was Dylan and Jonah leading up to saying their first I love yous to each other and then having sex for the first time. You don’t see it on page, since they’re both minors (or at least I think they still were by the end of the book, it was a little unclear) but there was a lot of lead up to it that I think, while it didn’t necessarily detract, it certainly didn’t add anything – for me, at least. Also, I didn’t need the detail of Dylan preferring to top than bottom, especially when, again, they’re seventeen.

One thing I did appreciate was that, even towards the end, you could tell that for as much as Jonah felt for Dylan, you could still tell that he was plagued with the thoughts of how he’s meant to hate him. This was a nice little detail as I feel like sometimes enemies-to-lovers storylines, because in addition to fake dating this book was enemies-to-lovers, the two leads will straight up just forget the disdain they held for one another. I think it was a lot more prevalent for Jonah because, even though Dylan was going through his own stuff, it felt like Jonah’s was a lot more present (if that makes sense), like he was actively struggling just to keep himself afloat day in day out, so often had his emotions right there, often on the surface, making him a lot more explosive, extroverted and boisterous than Dylan.

Now I will say, I did have the plan to specifically talk about Dylan throughout this book, about how he’s got this trauma in thinking that his brother distancing himself from his family was his fault, and how there’s this letter he’s got that he (Dylan) knows is from his brother that he refuses to open, because he’s scared of what’s inside. But I’ve fully not been able to remember what it was that I wanted to say about Dylan. Not in a he’s a bad character way, but more in the way of I just talked about other things instead.

So overall, this book definitely wasn’t as heavy on the romance as I thought it would be. I won’t lie, I’ve also seen a few Goodreads reviews saying that this book has been mislabelled, since it seems to focus more on the characters respective traumas than the romance. I can definitely see that point people have made because there definitely is more of a focus on what the characters are going through, rather than the romance, but the romance is still there. Anyway, I liked this book. Real solid conclusion, I know.

Okay, bye!