Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Dear Love, I Hate You

This book was fun and unique, it was overall a super enjoyable read. The ending was piss poor though, the couple were the only two in the book who had anything close to a satisfactory ending. For me, any book that I reach the 50% mark and feel like the book could easily be wrapped up in the next few pages is a huge red flag. In this particular case, all of the drama that was built up through the first half of the book could have easily been resolved by the 60% mark of this book, so everything after that felt like drama was just being created for the sake of making the book longer not really enhancing the plot. I honestly wish I had DNF'ed this at 50-60%.

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bookswithatlas's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Content Warnings

virgoupallnight's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The style of this book is very Wattpad-esque.

Girl “doesn’t” like boy, meet cute, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl break up and get back together several times, happily ever after

. Don’t get me wrong I love a cheesy romance as much as the next person, but it becomes exhausting when every bad thing in the world that could happen, happens to both main characters and somehow every issue is forced into resolution by the end of the book. In several cases, it seems like the author just tired of the problem that she gave the character so she created the shortest, lowest effort resolution to move on from that issue.

For example when Aveena makes up with her mother after nine years of neglect, all it took was her mother to cry and show that she missed her dad? Maybe I’m just being cynical but I feel like the damage and emotional abuse/neglect wouldn’t just vanish like that. Or consider the fact that she was drugged and assaulted and within hours of waking up was basically over it and DTF with Xavier? I mean everyone handles trauma in their own way but the fact that it’s so casually glossed over and then never brought up again to me means that there could’ve been a better way to bring the two characters back together.

I believe that if the characters hadn’t been given every conflict possible the author could have developed some of the more character-building trauma in their lives.

I mean for Pete’s sake you don’t find out that Xavier was injured in the boating accident (or even on the boat when it happened) that killed Finn’s mom until almost the end of the book and then several pages later that trauma is being sexualized by Aveena before it’s pretty much never mentioned again

. Overall, I think this book should have gone through a bit more editing, but it was still a decent read with a professional feel to the writing style. I finished the book and overall thought it was decent which is why I still gave it a 3/5, but I don’t think it will be one of those books that I pickup and comfort read.

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