Reviews with content warning for Fatphobia - Quando o Amor é Fogo

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Quando o Amor é Fogo by Sarah Hogle

12 reviews

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lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle is a contemporary romance that contains all of the tropes and clichés we both love and hate. It has the quirky female protagonist, the semi-toxic relationship we sometimes like to indulge in, and a happy ending that will make you believe in love. Before you read the story, you need to be ready to take a journey with these characters. It is my moral responsibility to tell you that this journey is mostly not very fun, and although you don’t hate the characters at the end, you will hate them for most of it. Even at the end, I didn’t particularly care for any of the characters, I was as happy for them as I would be for a stranger I drove past while I was driving to work (no feelings whatsoever, more like… “ok yay I guess? Anyways”). Allow me to explain what I mean. Let me introduce you to our two main characters:

Naomi:

For about 85% of the book, Naomi is a self pitying, whiny, selfish character who does absolutely nothing to solve her problems. In fact, she just likes to make lists about her problems then sit there and stare at it so she can be miserable. She narrates the entire story the way the girls on Mean Girls would probably tweet, and I’m pretty sure she thinks she’s funny, but her jokes just provoke me to violence. She makes self deprecating jokes, one, after the other, and they’re not even the funny kind? Naomi sounds like the people you encounter in life who sit there and casually tell you about their trauma so you can forget your own and comfort them, because their needs always come first. She’s mad because she’s unhappy, and therefore makes everyone else in her life mad and miserable. Because she’s unhappy, she thinks it’s fine to embarrass her fiancé in front of her friends then get mad at him for it later. She takes out her anger at Nicholas in the most childish and petty ways and cannot communicate to save her miserable life. Why communicate when you can trade your perfectly functional car in for a broken down piece of trash in order to embarrass your fiancé and his family? Why tell your fiancé you don’t want to go to dinner, when you can dress like you’re a 5 year old’s Barbie doll and go to a high class restaurant so people can laugh at him? Seriously? How is he the one that loses in these situations? How did you win here? I don’t know if she’s meant to be quirky as she does this, or if she just sucks ass. Either way, she sucks ass.

Nicholas:

Oh, you think just because Naomi sucks and makes him miserable, he’s off the hook? Nope! Nicolas is a 30-something-year old man who still has to go visit his mama every day so she can feed and dress him. He’ll run to mommy for any inconvenience and allow her to humiliate his fiancée, then he’ll get mad at Naomi when she’s upset! How dare Naomi not just sit there and take abuse? Has she no shame?! This man wonders why he doesn’t have any friends… it’s because mommy doesn’t have time to pick them out for you baby. Also, it’s because you’re stuck up and obsessed with toothpaste?? He buys his mom flowers then gaslights Naomi when she asks for some as well. He’ll tell her she’s annoying and spiteful and making him miserable, then get upset when she says she doesn’t love him.

Honestly, these characters are so unlovable and really do deserve each other. This is a story about two toxic people who are so toxic to each other they ruin everything around them, then they’re like “omg! Why not terrorize everyone else and be nice to each other?” and that’s how the story ends essentially. Maybe that’s the point of the book, that they both suck so much it’s not fair for anyone else to have to deal with that so they learn to deal with each other. I refuse to believe someone would write characters this childish and toxic and think it’s cute and quirky? There’s no way the author has ever interacted with a person who is above the age of 12, and thought that this is what an adult acts like. It has to be a joke! Maybe it was done on purpose, maybe it’s a story where two awful people find love and save the rest of us from their awfulness. If I’m meant to love these characters by the end, then the author missed the point by 76 miles at least.

Literally every single issue in this book can be solved by communication. Instead they try to poison and drown each other (but it’s quirky and random ahaha!), sabotage each other’s work days, and then eventually learn to stop.

Yes, okay I’ll admit. They got less annoying somewhere in the second half of the book. When Nicholas and Naomi finally stopped stapling each others underwear to the ceiling, and putting their hands in hot water so they could wet the bed (I’m not making this up), we got to actually learn about the characters and hate them a little less. If anything though, that makes me more mad! Because clearly, Sarah Hogle can write well rounded and genuine characters, so why the hell did she make the first ⅔ of this book a nightmare? There’s no way she thought that would be funny, it was honestly so embarrassing to read. It has the same vibe as people who think pointing a double chin is peak humor, like please, stop making me lose hope in the sanity of the human race. Stop making me want to choke on that god awful spaghetti they made and just perish like that. I’m really mad because the ending of the book was so sweet and genuine, and the rest of it could have been so good. I know Hogle had some really important things to say about how to maintain a relationship, but all of that was drowned out by their childish pranks and insults. The development that happened at the end was golden, and heartwarming, and I want to say it was almost worth it, but sadly it just wasn’t. Even if your goal was to say: look how much these characters grew! It could have been done better. You Deserve Each Other has a really, really good premise, and a beautiful falling action where everything comes together. It’s sad that the rest of the book is an absolute train wreck. It’s a missed opportunity.

Overall Rating: 3.5

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