Review: Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai
Livvy Kane and Nicholas Chandler are the heirs of two families whose grocery-store empire collapsed a decade ago in a mess of betrayal and tragedy. Every year on Livvy’s birthday they meet up for one no-strings night, and every year she leaves before morning. This year, things change. Hate to Want You opens Alisha Rai’s Forbidden Hearts trilogy and it is so good I read it in one sitting and immediately preordered book two.
Rai is doing what the romance genre actually needs more of: writing characters who feel like adults with histories. Livvy is dealing with depression on the page, in a way that’s specific and unromanticized. Nicholas is wound so tight he’s basically a wire, and the book takes seriously how much work it’s going to take for him to be a person someone can actually be in a relationship with. The family-feud setup, which could have been pure soap, ends up doing real thematic work because the trauma underneath it is treated with respect.
The chemistry is excellent. Rai writes sex scenes that actually advance character, which is harder than it sounds. The annual hookup arrangement could have been gimmicky and instead it’s the load-bearing emotional architecture of the whole book.
If I have a complaint, it’s that the family villain plotline (you’ll know who I mean) is a touch cartoonish in places. The book is at its best in the small moments between Livvy and Nicholas and a little less sure-footed when it widens out to family melodrama. Also, the chronic-pain thread for Nicholas could have used either more space or less; it sits in a weird middle ground.
But these are quibbles. Hate to Want You is the kind of contemporary romance that makes me remember why I read the genre.
For who? Fans of Talia Hibbert, Kennedy Ryan, and anyone who wants romance that engages with mental health without flinching.
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