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A review by kair_ree
The Trouble with Hating You by Sajni Patel
1.0
This is...not very good. I mostly enjoyed the first chapter, but it was a downward spiral from there. The characters are poorly developed, the workplace aspect of it is extremely weak, and the relationship is kind of all over the place. Nothing added up to anything satisfying. Also, slut shaming.
It's clear the author wanted this story to have a feminist slant (this is definitely not a feminist story) and the issues that each character had could have been moving, but nothing was really fleshed out or allowed to breathe. Overall the story seemed trite or juvenile and the banter was for the most part weak. There are also many scenes featuring multiple characters with lots of dialogue where it's not clear who is speaking.
Liya, the heroine, starts out with potential, but quickly devolves. She's independent and isn't afraid to make what she wants known. She's actually not very likable, which I was kind of into. She's an outcast in her community due to her independence and her interest in sex (well, it's presented as an interest, but then it turns into sex being a crutch or something bad for her). She has a high power job, but it turns out her company is failing and then all the work related stuff just turns into a very boring plot device for her to interact with the hero, Jay. Both of them are trying to save the company even though it appears to have done very bad things. I wasn't sure why we were supposed to be rooting for them to succeed. It was an extremely weird choice to make.
Jay is also problematic and his dialogue always seems forced. That's actually a problem for a lot of characters in this book which is unfortunate because it is v dialogue heavy. His character is basically a mishmash of every other generic, nice guy hero. His backstory was intriguing, but it never seemed like it was really what had happened to him. All of his conflict felt thrown onto this character to give him something interesting, but it didn't seem to match his personality. I don't know. He never made sense to me.
My biggest issue with the story is that there's a lot of hand wringing by all the characters that Liya is sexually promiscuous when she's just not (not slut shaming- her alleged promiscuity could have been a compelling part of this story). I know that the number of sexual partners a person has to have to be labeled as "loose" varies by culture, but Liya's reputation is apparently known to the world at large.
Actually, everything about the Mike storyline rubbed me the wrong way, including the way Jay saves the day. First he gives a trite speech to Mike, then says he's going to press charges against him, and then decides he's going to force Mike to go back with flowers to apologize to Liya. I'm sorry, but Jay saw Liya after her encounter with Mike and she was in bad shape- why would you want to make her see this jerk again, let alone accept a gift and an apology from him? And then Liya is all like, Jay gave me back my power. NO.
The slut shaming was just all over the place in this and a lot of it was internal to the heroine. I suppose that was supposed to make her issues more complex, but since she wasn't really out there degrading herself with sex it came across like the author was afraid to really explore the ramifications of Liya's sexual abuse (that is revealed very early on and is not, imo, a spoiler). The author wanted her to have more sexual partners than the hero, Jay, but not so many that he couldn't easily brush them aside. That made the storyline, and Liya's plight, weak. I think it would have been more interesting and impactful to see Jay, the "good" guy, needing to come to terms with someone who had slept with a lot of people and ultimately finding her worth pursuing, loving, and defending. The fact that the heroine was always saying she wasn't really a slut also made it apparent that she believed there are women who are sluts (don't sleep with more than 7 people, ladies) and they are beneath her. It left me feeling very unsettled. Aside from Liya, a lot of men talk about what a big ole ho she is and all of it is terrible.
Finally, there's a weird competition between a woman, who I would assume has most likely also been abused by the villain of the story, and Liya that is cringe worthy and makes both of them look bad. I'm trying to find something positive to say about this, but there isn't much to highlight. The hero's mom was cool and I was glad that the heroine's mom made some progress, but those things aren't enough to make this worth slogging through.
It's clear the author wanted this story to have a feminist slant (this is definitely not a feminist story) and the issues that each character had could have been moving, but nothing was really fleshed out or allowed to breathe. Overall the story seemed trite or juvenile and the banter was for the most part weak. There are also many scenes featuring multiple characters with lots of dialogue where it's not clear who is speaking.
Liya, the heroine, starts out with potential, but quickly devolves. She's independent and isn't afraid to make what she wants known. She's actually not very likable, which I was kind of into. She's an outcast in her community due to her independence and her interest in sex (well, it's presented as an interest, but then it turns into sex being a crutch or something bad for her). She has a high power job, but it turns out her company is failing and then all the work related stuff just turns into a very boring plot device for her to interact with the hero, Jay. Both of them are trying to save the company even though it appears to have done very bad things. I wasn't sure why we were supposed to be rooting for them to succeed. It was an extremely weird choice to make.
Jay is also problematic and his dialogue always seems forced. That's actually a problem for a lot of characters in this book which is unfortunate because it is v dialogue heavy. His character is basically a mishmash of every other generic, nice guy hero. His backstory was intriguing, but it never seemed like it was really what had happened to him. All of his conflict felt thrown onto this character to give him something interesting, but it didn't seem to match his personality. I don't know. He never made sense to me.
My biggest issue with the story is that there's a lot of hand wringing by all the characters that Liya is sexually promiscuous when she's just not (not slut shaming- her alleged promiscuity could have been a compelling part of this story). I know that the number of sexual partners a person has to have to be labeled as "loose" varies by culture, but Liya's reputation is apparently known to the world at large.
Spoiler
In the beginning of the book this guy Mike, who appears to be a cis white American male, takes Liya out on a date and then attempts to sexually assault her because he's heard how easy she is. Setting aside how gross that is, the idea that he would have heard that Liya was easy and then later talk about her with some of her male coworkers (who also seem to think that she's easy) when her actual number of partners was so low (6) didn't add up. I guess it would be one thing if Mike had been from her temple, but he doesn't appear to be. So who is talking about Liya being promiscuos to him? Why is her reputation something he's heard about? Were all the guys Liya slept with from work or the coffee shop? Are the people at her temple running ads about her in the local paper?Actually, everything about the Mike storyline rubbed me the wrong way, including the way Jay saves the day. First he gives a trite speech to Mike, then says he's going to press charges against him, and then decides he's going to force Mike to go back with flowers to apologize to Liya. I'm sorry, but Jay saw Liya after her encounter with Mike and she was in bad shape- why would you want to make her see this jerk again, let alone accept a gift and an apology from him? And then Liya is all like, Jay gave me back my power. NO.
The slut shaming was just all over the place in this and a lot of it was internal to the heroine. I suppose that was supposed to make her issues more complex, but since she wasn't really out there degrading herself with sex it came across like the author was afraid to really explore the ramifications of Liya's sexual abuse (that is revealed very early on and is not, imo, a spoiler). The author wanted her to have more sexual partners than the hero, Jay, but not so many that he couldn't easily brush them aside. That made the storyline, and Liya's plight, weak. I think it would have been more interesting and impactful to see Jay, the "good" guy, needing to come to terms with someone who had slept with a lot of people and ultimately finding her worth pursuing, loving, and defending. The fact that the heroine was always saying she wasn't really a slut also made it apparent that she believed there are women who are sluts (don't sleep with more than 7 people, ladies) and they are beneath her. It left me feeling very unsettled. Aside from Liya, a lot of men talk about what a big ole ho she is and all of it is terrible.
Finally, there's a weird competition between a woman, who I would assume has most likely also been abused by the villain of the story, and Liya that is cringe worthy and makes both of them look bad. I'm trying to find something positive to say about this, but there isn't much to highlight. The hero's mom was cool and I was glad that the heroine's mom made some progress, but those things aren't enough to make this worth slogging through.