🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 1/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
⚠️ DNF Review — I made it to approximately 87% before I had to tap out. This review covers everything up to that point.
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read The Way I Hate Him yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
This book started out genuinely cute. I want to be upfront about that because it makes what it eventually became so much more frustrating. By the time I quit at 87%, I had been listening for five days, and the last two of those felt like a hostage situation. I regret not quitting sooner.
The Setup
Hattie has just failed all her midterms after losing her, very close, sister Cassidy to breast cancer. On what is already a terrible day, her boyfriend Matt breaks up with her — making himself sound far too good for her in the process, citing without any apparent shame that she hasn’t been “entertaining enough” lately. As Hattie’s packing her things, she notices a box that isn’t hers — it’s Matt’s boss’s stolen property, including a Grammy. Hattie finds out later that Matt had actually been fired on suspicion for the thefts, but in the moment she just grabs the box and decides she’s going to return it herself- hoping she will get Matt fired.
That boss is Hayes — famous musician, feuding with Hattie’s older brother Ryland for reasons nobody has fully explained yet — and when he catches Hattie dropping off a box of his stolen belongings, he doesn’t say thank you. He threatens to have her charged with the theft instead. He gives her two options: criminal charges, or she takes the job Matt was supposed to be doing — reading letters, organizing, setting up his computer. She doesn’t move in with him — she ends up in a tiny room above her sister’s store instead — but the job itself feels less like an offer and more like a trap. She takes it because what else is she supposed to do.
The setup is genuinely fun. The enemies-to-lovers potential is real. Hattie is dealing with genuine grief — Cassidy left behind a young daughter named Mac, who is being raised by Ryland — and there’s a lot of emotional meat to work with here.
And then there’s Mac and Chewy Charles.
Mac is Cassidy’s daughter and the absolute standout character of this entire book. She has a stuffed animal named Chewy Charles who she takes very seriously, and her interactions with Hattie are the funniest, warmest moments in the whole story. At one point Hattie gets informed by Mac that Chewy Charles doesn’t like her. Hattie’s response — “insulted… by a goddamn stuffy” — is the line that tells you exactly what kind of chaos Mac brings to every scene. And later, during a perfectly normal play session, Mac announces that Chewy Charles is “drinking the blood.. muahahahaha” Just casually. As children do.
I would read an entire book about Mac and Chewy Charles. Unfortunately that is not the book I was given.
The Feud
Hayes, Ryland, and Abel were once a tight group of three friends. Abel has remained firmly neutral throughout — he’ll have dinner with Hayes, but he’s also considered Ryland’s best friend. The feud itself is entirely between Hayes and Ryland, and it’s been burning for over ten years.
The cause? Ryland’s girlfriend turned up pregnant and told him it was Hayes’. It wasn’t. She was furious at Hayes because he’d turned her down — he wouldn’t sleep with her — and throwing him under the bus was her retaliation. She’d actually slept with someone else entirely, and that guy later admitted it to Abel. Hayes knew the truth the whole time and told Abel to keep quiet about it, reasoning that it wasn’t any of Ryland’s business since Ryland didn’t believe him anyway.
What really drove the wedge for Hayes wasn’t just being accused — it was that Ryland believed it immediately. Didn’t question it, didn’t come to him, just took the girlfriend’s word as gospel. And Hayes, already someone who feels like the world assumes the worst about him, essentially decided: fine. If everyone’s going to think I’m the bad guy anyway, I might as well lean into it.
Eventually, mid-argument, Abel finally says he’s not willing to stay quiet anymore. He confirms the truth — it was someone else, he verified it with the guy himself years later, there was no possible way it was Hayes.
By the time I tapped out at 87%, Ryland had processed enough of this to at least be in the same room as Hayes. Over ten years of fury doesn’t just evaporate because you found out you were wrong, and the book at least acknowledged that. The three of them were spotted having a drink together at a community gathering — not texting buddies, not reconciled friends, just three guys who can now occupy the same space without it becoming a problem. It’s a start.
Where It Started Going Wrong
Hayes is a problem. Not in the way enemies-to-lovers heroes are supposed to be the problem — not in the “he’s difficult but you can see why” way. In the actual, genuine, this-man-is-doing-real-damage way.
He tells Hattie he isn’t attracted to her. Then he nearly gets her off and walks away like nothing happened. He holds her hand and talks to her for an entire two-hour drive, then tells her nothing is happening between them the moment they arrive. He makes her share a bed with him — she tries the couch, the couch is terrible, she ends up in the bed — and then they make a bet: first one to moan loses. Hayes wins. And then acts completely nonchalant about the whole thing while she’s left feeling awful.
He dedicates a song to her at a show without using her name, looks her directly in the eyes while playing her favorite song, and then continues to blow hot and cold until she gets so confused she gets trash drunk trying to process it.
This isn’t romantic tension. This is negging. The whole push-pull cycle — give her a little, walk away, make her feel terrible, flirt with someone else, come back — is a textbook confidence erosion tactic, and watching Hattie keep coming back for more of it was seriously painful to sit with.
That said — and I want to be honest here — Hayes wasn’t the only problem. Hattie had her moments too. She was whiny in a way that got exhausting, and there were points where she blamed Hayes for things that genuinely weren’t his fault. By the midpoint of this book I was frustrated with both of them, which is not a great place to be in a romance.
The Back Half
Around chapter 16, the book reaches what feels like a natural conclusion. They’ve done the fake-breakup, they’ve done the finally-together moment. And then there are still ten chapters left. Six HoUrSsss of audio left. I cannot stress enough how little I understood why.
Hayes’s redemption arc, when it comes, is absurdly fast. He goes from selfish, emotionally manipulative bad boy to considerate, attentive perfect boyfriend in approximately one day — and the catalyst is Hattie’s other sister telling him he needs to repair Hattie’s room after the fight he and Ryland had in it and completely trashed it. He didn’t decide to do better on his own. He was told to fix the room. And he still gets full credit for it. The character progression doesn’t feel earned, it feels like a word count getting hit.
There’s also a weird BDSM turn that comes out of nowhere and doesn’t feel consistent with anything that’s been established. At one point Hayes tells Hattie “this is my pussy, no one touches it but me — not even you. If you want an orgasm you tell me.” I understand that’s a thing some people are into. In the context of a man who has spent this entire book systematically chipping away at her confidence, it landed very differently for me.
He tells her he loves her on her birthday. They have been actually together for approximately four seconds.
I tapped out at 87%.
Best Part of This Book
Mac and Chewy Charles. Genuinely. If this book had leaned into that energy instead of Hayes’s hot-and-cold routine, it would have been a completely different reading experience and super cute.
Worst Part of This Book
The length, the pacing, and the fact that both leads were exhausting in their own ways for the majority of the book. A story that should have wrapped up at chapter 16 kept going for another six hours, and none of those hours redeemed what came before them quickly enough to feel believable.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥🔥🔥🔥 — There’s a reasonable amount of heat in here, including an unexpected BDSM turn in the back half. The steam level was not the problem with this book.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
I wouldn’t know. I quit at 87% and I don’t regret it. I do sincerely regret not quitting sooner.
Would I Reread It?
Absolutely not. I couldn’t even finish it!
The Hot Take
Hayes spent the majority of this book doing everything possible to erode Hattie’s self-esteem, and then got handed a redemption arc because someone told him to fix a room. That’s not character growth. That’s following instructions. And while Hattie deserved better than that — she also needed to grow a backbone a lot earlier in the story instead of sticking around to be treated badly and then blaming him for things that weren’t even his fault. Honestly? A major mess on both sides.
Who Is This For
If you love a slow burn enemies-to-lovers and have infinite patience for leads who take a very long time to get their acts together — and you can handle a book that runs considerably longer than its natural endpoint — this might land differently for you than it did for me. If you need your hero to treat the heroine with basic respect before the 80% mark, save yourself five days.
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book
📱 Ebook
Amazon Kindle .ca | Amazon Kindle .com
🎧 Audiobook
🎁 New to Audible? Get 3 months free (US)
🎁 New to Libro.fm? Get 2 free audiobooks
Ready for more from LD? Find them here
Plot Twisted. 🔥
🎧 | Genre: Romance | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 | Narrators: Vanessa Edwin, Teddy Hamilton