Author: Nicole Williams
Genre: Adult, Romance, Contemporary
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: September 23, 2018
Source: Bought
Ms. Romance, Hannah Arden, writes one of the top read relationship advice columns in the nation. Mr. Reality, Brooks North, writes the top read relationship advice column.
Ms. Romance believes in true love and soul mates. Mr. Reality believes love is a term humanity has assigned to the primal instinct to procreate. She believes in fate—he in chance. She knows there’s one right person for everyone—he knows there are multiple ones. The two writers couldn’t be more polarized on relationships. They’re professional rivals, and philosophical antagonists.
For eight years, their battles have been fought with words and ink. That changes when they apply for the same position at the World Times and find themselves face-to-face for the first time. Brooks isn’t the sour-faced, antiquity of a man Hannah pictured. And Hannah isn’t exactly the middle-aged shrew with cat hair on her housedress that Brooks imagined either.
In lieu of competing for the promotion traditional ways, the two writers are presented with playing the leading roles in a social experiment unlike any before. Can a person be tricked into falling in love? Can a relationship be crafted under the right string of circumstances? Hannah knows the answer. So does Brooks.
Agreeing to the terms, the two set out on a three-month dating experiment, live-streamed for the world to watch. All Hannah has to do to win is not fall in love with the narcissistic brute. All Brooks has to do is get the starry-eyed dreamer to fall in love with him. Both are so confident in their philosophies, they expect the challenge to be easy.
With the world watching, Brooks and Hannah will be forced to confront their beliefs and conclude, once and for all, who’s right. The answer is one neither of them saw coming.
I feel like it's only fair to warn you guys right off the bat: this is going to be more rant than review. It is also going to be loaded full of spoilers because I have some thoughts.
Okay, I thought I was going to love this book. Enemies-to-lovers is my jam and I basically read all I can of that trope. While I don't think I've ever read another one of Nicole William's books, I had high hopes for Dating the Enemy because of all the hype and the premise. However, it just . . . did not work for me. At all.
Let's go through what I did like: the cover is awesome, it definitely caught my eye and I feel like it reflects the tension of enemies-to-lovers really well. This was also a book that, despite the problems I had with it, kept me reading. I went through it pretty quickly (though, to be fair, I skimmed a decent bit toward the end) and I didn't DNF, so that's something.
Yeah . . . that was pretty much all I was okay within this book. I feel really bad about not having more nice things to say about it but it just wasn't my cup of tea. So, onto the things that didn't work/the rant.
Ohhhhhh my gosh, you guys, I could not stand this contrived, weird social experiment/dating situation the two MCs were thrown into. It made zero sense to me. Basically, Brooks, aka "Mr. Reality" has to make Hannah fall in love with him and Hannah, aka "Ms. Romance" has to not fall in love with him proving . . . something? I don't know what the reasoning is behind this or how Hannah would win if she didn't fall in love. Wouldn't that disprove or weaken all her points about love? Like, if Hannah was supposed to be "Ms. Romance" and Brooks is "Mr. Reality", wouldn't it make more sense for Hannah to make Brooks fall in love with her and admit love is real instead of the other way around?? Hannah already believes in love so I'm confused as to what Brooks was trying to convince her of by making her fall in love with him. And isn't he kind of an ass for manipulating her emotions and feelings and making her fall in love with him when he doesn't believe in love and doesn't plan on returning those feelings (at least at first)?
Like, Hannah's whole schtick was proving that love lives and stuff but she spent three months not falling in love with a guy who was wooing her so like . . . what's the logic here? That makes no sense to me. It seemed like the author confused the main characters. What they each preached absolutely didn't coincide with their actions throughout the book. Brooks, the supposedly love-unbeliever, was totally romantic and wanted a relationship with Hannah. But Hannah, the "hopeful romantic" was SO RESISTANT to all the romance and was so wishy-washy and unable to own up to her feelings, even behind doors when she and Brooks were "real" and away from the cameras.
Throughout the book, Brooks had to basically stage these dates to take Hannah on where they were filmed to a live audience and it was so cringy. I guess it was going for a like, The Bachelor vibe but it just didn't work for me. It felt weird that a newspaper would turn to TV to up its own popularity but, whatever, that's the least of my problems with this book. One of these dates he takes her on is to this dance club and when she gets there -- being filmed, keep in mind -- Brooks is dancing and flirting with another girl!! Like, what the actual hell, Brooks! What an asshole move! It's one thing to be a jerk in private but when literally hundreds of thousands of people are watching you disrespect the girl you actually asked on a date by flirting with another one . . . that's just gross. That whole situation made me so mad. Especially when Brooks was like "oh, are you jealous?! *winkwink*". Like, no, you ginormous douche, I'm pissed that you're embarrassing me and disrespecting me, especially in front of a live audience!
It also felt like there was no gradual change in Brooks's feelings toward Hannah. Like, the first time they meet he's like "love doesn't exist!!!" and the next he's trying to take Hannah on "real dates" and wooing her and wanting a real relationship. Like, what convinced him he wanted love?? Hannah constantly rejecting him?
Oh my gosh, I also got so tired of the constant conversations about whether love existed. I get that was a pretty significant theme in the book but it was just the same exact conversation every single chapter. It drove me insane and those conversations were where the most skimming took place.
ALSO (sorry, I know this review is getting long but I GOTTA RANT), it felt like the author was trying to be super body positive and the MC Hannah described herself as a size 10 and not like the other super thin woman in the city but it just didn't work. Hannah made some somewhat negative comments about her own weight throughout the book (usually followed by Brooks being like "no way, you're crazy" or whatever) and she also constantly tore down women who were skinny. It was really obnoxious to read and I don't think the author achieved what she meant to do, which I'm sure was to be positive and inclusive of different body types.
Okay, there was one last scene at the end that I have to talk about because it was so unbelievable and out of nowhere -- toward the end of the book, Brooks and Hannah are making out or whatever in her apartment and her friends just randomly show up (it's late at night BTW) wanting to watch the like, extended version of Pride and Prejudice so Hannah basically forces Brooks into her closet AND PROCEEDS TO WATCH THE FIRST DISC OF THE MOVIE WITH HER FRIENDS. WHILE BROOKS IS JUST STANDING LOCKED IN A CLOSET.
Like, WTF??? First of all, why would her friend just show up in the middle of the night with no warning and expect to watch a several-hours-long movie? SECOND OF ALL, why didn't Hannah just tell them not tonight?! Wouldn't that make more sense than making your boyfriend stand in the closest for "a few hours"?! Who does that?? And apparently, Brooks wasn't even mad about it! He was just like "oh, now you own me *sexyeyes*". No way! If I was in that situation, I'd be fuming. She left him in a closet for a few hours while she watched a movie with her friends!! A movie they already watched hundreds of times! UGH.
Honestly, I have several other things I could talk about that really bothered me but I'm going to cut myself off there. This book just . . . didn't make sense to me. Nothing really worked and I was left just feeling frustrates and confused about all the high ratings. That said, there are generally high ratings for this book so I'm not in the majority here. If this sounds like your cup of tea, give it a shot! I hope you like it more than I did.
It was a circus, and Brooks and I had become the main attraction.
Two out of Five Teapots
No comments:
Post a Comment