I Love You, I Hate You: All's fair in love and law in this irresistible enemies-to-lovers rom-com! by Elizabeth DavisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Three and a half stars.
Victoria Clemenceaux is a brilliant young in-house lawyer working for a soulless big corporation called Smorgasbord, based in . It's her job to quash any hints of law suits against the company and she's very good at it. She loathes her employer but it pays mega-bucks and as the daughter of a teen single-mother who has battled poverty her entire life, money is important. She has huge college debts and she would dearly love to buy her mother a house so working anywhere else for a lower salary is out of the question. Her arch-nemesis is Owen Pohl, the original Trust Fund kid, son of one of the richest families in the Upper Midwest, who has set up his own law firm who now likes to take on big business, and Victoria's employer is one of the largest in Minnesota, which is handy when it comes to depositioning senior management. They may hate each other in the Courtroom but its the sort of fiery hatred that leads to hate-sex.
What Victoria and Owen don't know is that while they may be arch-enemies in real life, they are close friends on Twitter. Neither uses their real names and Victoria has always been deliberately vague about her job and her physical location because her liberal, feminist views often attract trolls. Victoria has always been so focused on her career she doesn't really have any physical friends, only groups of like-minded individuals on Twitter. Even then, it is only 'Luke' to whom she opens up and spills all her hopes, fears, and insecurities.
IDK, is it a significant anniversary of the release of You've Got Mail? This is the second or third retelling of the film I have read this year, which itself was of course a remake of the film The Shop Around the Corner, which in itself was (according to Wiki) based on a Hungarian play. The trouble with reboots is how to keep the story interesting without totally departing from the original (by which I mean the Tom Hanks version because that's my era).
Well, the answer is, in this case, really well! I have issues with the Tom Hanks film, namely why he deliberately manipulates the situation, acting as his own Cyrano de Bergerac if you like. Elizabeth Davis does this brilliantly. She totally explains why Own doesn't admit he is Victoria's Twitter friend Luke (as in Skywalker) when he finds out - and it makes sense! And it doesn't make him a douche.
The only reason this isn't four stars is because I found the sex scenes both too frequent and not very sexy. I get that they are f*ckbuddies, but it wasn't very erotic. Conversely, I found the inevitable break-up scenes really moving and they brought me to tears.
Finally, a retelling of the Tom Hanks film which addresses my issues with the film in a way that makes sense. I will certainly look out for other books by Elizabeth Davis in future.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.
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