A review by bookcheshirecat
At First Spite by Olivia Dade

emotional funny reflective slow-paced

2.5

“To her mind, the owner of a spite house should spend her days reclining upon a sleek settee. One upholstered in satin, or possibly velvet brocade. Whichever fabric most clearly told observers I am a woman of both ineffable power and ineffable pettiness, and thus bought a fancy elongated chair-thing.” 

➽ At First Spite was one of my most anticipated releases, so I was disappointed this was a complete miss for me. I was excited about the premise, as the idea of a Spite House was so interesting. The main character Athena moves into one after being dropped by her fiance. Unfortunately, that means being neighbors with her ex and his brother, who convinced him to break off the engagement in the first place.

➽ Athena's character had promise and I really sympathized with her situation. Broke and scorned, she has no choice but to move into the Spite House and take on a job at the local coffee shop. It's tough as she's far from family and friends and too ashamed to tell them what happened. Instead, she's back at Harlot's Bay where she knows no one but her ex-fiance and his brother. I liked the discussion of her feeling lost when it came to her career. I empathised with her struggles to find out what she wanted to do and switching between jobs. Athena is curious and passionate but struggled to commit to one field in the past. After giving up her teaching job back home, she'd hoped to take time off to figure things out, but that's no longer possible. Unfortunately, the writing made Athena feel distant as a character and I struggled to connect to her, despite feeling for her situation. She felt so superficial and times and even serious scenes such as her depressive phase felt underdeveloped. Because of Matthew's involvement in her life, it also felt like Athena lacked agency, as everything was done for her. Her realisations about her self-worth felt unearned, as she didn't properly grow over the course of the story.

➽ Matthew's character brought up a lot of mixed feelings. I liked the idea of him being stoic and reliable, as he's been forced to take responsibility for his brother Johnny. He basically raised him after an incident in their childhood (that we should have learned about much earlier) and devoted his entire life to him. Even now that Johnny is almost 30, Matthew is still looking out for his little brother and managing his career, as they're now both at the same practice. I would have liked Matthew, but he felt like two completely different characters, so his character didn't add up. Past Matthew thought Athena was so unsuitable that he convinced his brother to break off their engagement and
even manipulated him by threatening to move away from Harlot's Bay. I can't believe this was later excused because 'Matthew just knew they weren't right for each other and Athena deserved better'.
Present Matthew is lusting after Athena after having had a 15-minute conversation with her in the prologue and feels so guilty over what happened that he gets involved in her life. How are these the same person? I wish he'd had some proper character development because he did a complete 180 when it came to Athena without any reason.

➽ The romance was NOT the spite-filled hate-to-love dynamic I wanted. If you want a really good one, I'd recommend Do Your Worst by Rosie Danan instead. My main issues was that Athena and Matthew were lusting after each other from the very beginning and despite their bad history, they never felt like enemies. The story would tell us about their resentment, but all their interactions didn't match up to it, they were way too civil. The spite? Basically nonexistent, except when it randomly gets brought up midway through the book when Athena decides to do the pranks after all. I didn't see any development in their relationship, all their interactions were forced and sometimes unbelievable -
why did Athena admit her deepest fears at the beginning of the book when Matthew was still a practical stranger??


➽ I was also uncomfortable with how Matthew gets involved in Athena's life immediately. It was all excused as him 'taking responsibility' for how he blew up her life. However, it rubbed me the wrong way how often he went behind her back to do things, he knew she wouldn't like. S
uch as paying her mortgage, sending recommendation letters and trying to get her a job, then asking if she'd actually applied.
Matthew overstepped way too often and I found his actions inappropriate and invasive. In real life, it would have been downright creepy how he meddled in Athena's life. Later on, the story managed to justify
him breaking into Athena's house when she had a depressive episode (I get he was worried, but it's still terrifying to think about someone intruding in your home when you're having a mental breakdown), kissing her when she was having a breakdown (maybe he had good intentions, but it was SO inappropriate and not the right moment!) and making her therapy appointments (I get a friend helping out, but Matthew was still hadn't earned her trust, and yet Athena suddenly wants him to be her support system). In the end, Matthew was also a coward as he asked to keep their relationship 'private', because he was scared of the consequences. He knew Johnny wouldn't be happy and in the end, he gives up Athena so easily like she's just another thing he can give his brother. I felt like there were so many red flags that were reframed as being 'romantic'.


➽ I struggled so much with the writing and plot. Normally, I love Olivia Dade's writing style, but this book felt unpolished and not up to her usual standard. The sentences were unnecessarily convoluted and the modern slang (including memes and other phrases) was a bit too much at times. I didn't like Athena's quirk of constantly coming up with different metaphors/similies that were trying too hard to be creative. Most of the time, the comparisons were just weird and unnatural (such as the plasma ball one or the weird metaphor with space/Jupiter). The dialogue with Matthew and Athena felt so forced and sometimes I feel like I lost the conversation thread. The plot was also all over the place. The 'prank war' element was being underutilized and not executed how I expected based on the premise. It only comes up in the middle of the book for a short time, but that's it. This romance also doesn't feel like it fits the typical beats you'd expect, as the couple gets together so late in the story and the final conflict is pushed off until the very end because of it. It didn't help that with Athena constantly switching jobs (and therefore settings, coworkers etc.), it was hard to feel settled in the story.
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