It hurts my heart to give this three stars.

I love this author’s writing. I love that she writes suuuper angsty interracial historical romances (this heroine was straight up racist and she had to grow, a lot). And I love how much story she packs into these short, impactful books. 

This was a (very) enemies to lovers marriage of convenience, the trope combo that I’ll never stop loving. The hate-breakfasting-together-every-morning scenes alone were making me sweat. And I loved how we we really went there with these unlikable MCs.

That said, I had two issues with this story.

The first is an element of my own hypocrisy: I LOVE enemies to lovers, the more hate the better—but I don’t love hate Fing. If you love people getting it on out of pure malice, this book is for you. But it was beyond my personal angst limit.

The second thing had to do with the hint of BDSM in here. We had some some degradation kink, they both had brat energy, and they were fairly switch-y about it (there was a very compelling scene where she went FemDom on him and I loved to see it). 

I actually had two problems with this part of their sexual relationship. First, it all happened during the hate Fing and, though it should have felt like a “How NOT To Kink” tutorial, it was written in a hot way. Which I didn’t love.

And also, the story was missing a very crucial scene: a post “I love you” resolution to their hateful-yet-kinky dynamic. Because I genuinely don’t know if this was a ‘kink cured by love’ plot (which almost always results in a one star from me) or if they continued their kinky dynamic into their HEA (which would have been great, especially if we saw that transition on-page).

I’m still very excited to read more from this author and I especially want more books in this series!