Dating You / Hating You

I guess, based on the blurb, I expected this book to be funnier. Definitely had some humor in it during the pranking phrase but wasnt really what I would call a comedy. The romance was okay if a bit eh and the main characters were pretty good as well.

So what made this book earn four stars?

The absolute truth it portrayed.
That just because youre female you should set up parties and crap like that even if its not your job.
That naturally you should be the one performing secretarial tasks even when youve fought to gain a position far removed from that job.
That you get called nicknames like sport, kiddo, hun, and anything else that is both astonishingly condescending and infantile.
That you can work harder, longer, and be better at than your colleagues and still not be given the same respect you should get.
That any mistake, emotion, or even remotely less than perfect work is somehow that much worse than your male counterparts.

I gave this book four stars because there, in black and white, they were able to capture the frustration of dealing with misogyny in the workplace and it was just all so true to life. From the line they carefully thread so its just this side of legal to the internal rage you must hide because theres nothing you can do unless you want to be unemployed.

So yeah, four stars for showing what its really like.

Definitely not my favorite Christina Lauren. I actually really liked both characters, and I actually laughed out loud at a few of the antics, but it seemed like the authors had to fill the book with way too much detail about the hollywood industry to fill up the book. There was no real personal growth on the character’s part, and I found myself pushing to get through the book. I loved BB, BS, and BP, and was a bit disappointed with this one.

I’m a fan of these authors and have enjoyed a lot of their work. This time was a bit of a chore and at times I almost gave up. Actually I came really close to a DNF. I’d been wanting to read it since it came out so I was determined to finish. This one had a really different feel to it from others of theirs and I didn’t really enjoy it. Maybe because there’s just nothing that compelling about two flirting co-workers vying for the same job? I don’t know, but The Hating Game by Sally Thorne did it much better I thought, and with way more humor. Of course, that’s just my opinion.

In the later part of the book, the story got a lot better. The will we or won’t we pull between the two main characters gets resolved and lots of other major things get done as well. I quite enjoyed this part of the book. One of the best parts involved a curious dog and something he ate. I laughed out loud in the middle of the night during that scene. It’s just too bad it took so long to get to the good parts.

The books written by this pair since this book have all been wonderful, so for me this was just an anomaly which I guess is bound to happen when you read so many by the same authors. I do highly recommend anything else by these authors, I just can’t recommend this one.

I absolutely love their other books but this was somewhat disappointing. It was a very unrealistic story with an ending that felt forced. The characters just didn’t work for me. The authors talk about hos difficult it was to write this book and it clearly shows. I was disappointed because I loved the other books and characters.

When writing a workplace romance, I imagine it is hard to find just the right balance between describing the actual work that keeps these people busy for 80% of their time and describing the attraction the H/h have for each other. This book gets pretty close — hence the 4 stars. I like the fact that we see that these people have important things to do other than lust after each other and those important things create a believable obstacle (of time if nothing else.)

I have only read one other book by this writing team (it was in the Beautiful series) and I really hated the insta-love, insta-lust and inappropriate workplace behavior aspect of it and swore never to read this author again. Obviously I forgot cause here I am writing a positive review of a different book by this team. This one couldn’t have been more different and I really enjoyed it: a work-place situation in which both behave pretty professionally, a hostile work environment, the different ways men and women react to that hostile environment, and realistic take on two pretty mature individuals who have work to do and do it despite their mutual lust. It made those times when they did give in to their mutual attraction in inappropriate places that much more believable.
My only complaint is that there wasn’t much real chemistry between the H/h. We were told it was there quite often but I certainly didn’t really feel it. The plot was okay, a bit contrived near the end, but it was overall pretty believable. And I enjoyed getting a feel for the work they did.
If you’re looking for extreme heat, this isn’t the novel for you. But I do recommend it if you want a more balanced take on an interesting workplace romance between two more mature (late 20s/early 30s) characters.

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