Review – I Hated You First

Synopsis

Clay has always had it bad for his best friends sister. Despite having grown up essentially another member of the Harwood family he has never seen Lauren as a sibling. All they have ever done is bicker but now all grown up Lauren & Clay work together along with her brother at the Harwood family business. Lauren does her best to keep her family, work, dating life & Clay all seperate. But in order to get out of a road trip with her obnoxious brother she’s forced to bring the guy she’s dating to a family barbeque with all her loud family…and Clay. Meaning, now her neatly seperated boxes are all smashed togeher. When Lauren’s family intervienes in her love life and sets her up with her SIL’s friend as a double date with none other than Clay the tension of their love to hate relationship finally boils over & the two begin dating in secret. Avoiding family & work darama can only last so long. What happens when it all blows up? Will they choose each other or will the reality of their romance fizzle out of their secret bubble?

Break It Down

Story: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 – 4 stars
This story had a lot of my favorite elements. It is written in dual POV so we can be right there with Clay & Lauren while they figure out how to go from awkward to friends to lovers. It’s a very cute brothers best friend trope with a dash of workplace romance. Their HEA is sweet – I love the “it’s always been you”/”i choose you” romantic arc.

Content: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – 3 stars
My main issue in this book was i felt that we didn’t get enough character development. I wanted to know a lot more about Clay & a lot less about Denver haha. The book did have a nice forward moving story & good chapter length which i appreciate. If we would have had just a little more in depth inner monologue with both MC’s i feel like it would have made the story perfect.

Spice: 🔥 – 1 flame
This book is definitely more YA in terms of spice level. We got some kissing & making out but nothing further & no off page implications either. I would have liked a little more chemistry but for what it was it was cute as heck.

Overall: ✨✨✨ – 3 stars
I liked Clay, a lot. He was a great MMC. Lauren was okay – I wanted to love her bc her name is Lauren (obviously) but we just got kind of a cliffnote version of her personality & it wasn’t enough for me to really like her. I also felt like the jump from “i like you” to “i choose him over everything” was a little rushed. A few more romcom cute date moments would have really helped the story flush out better in my opinion. Overall it was a very cute story & a nice happy fluffy book to fill in after something heavy. I also read the prequel novella & the follow up story with Lauren’s best friend but truly they were both kind of misses for me. I like Clay & Lauren best in this series for sure.