Review: Hate at First Sight

Hate at First Sight by Lizzie O'Hagan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kate is a data analyst for the upmarket clothing brand Poster, she's detail-orientated, always prepared, and obsessed by the data. She and her fellow back-office nerds/geeks hang out in the basement while the beautiful people work on the tenth floor. Until the company needs to downsize and the geeks are forced to come up to the tenth floor. To add insult to injury, there's a promotions freeze and Kate is way overdue for promotion to Director. Her only hope is a new project for which she has been volunteered, a microsite to widen the brand's appeal to zoomers. The only downside (well TBH there is no upside) is that Kate will be forced to work with the stunningly good-looking, happy-go-lucky, Harry, who almost kissed her at the office party five years ago, and Cally, a social media influencer, the firm's new Innovation Director who just happens to be the daughter of one of the CEO's best friends, nepotism is at work people.

Kate, Harry and Cally have very different ideas for how to develop the microsite and bicker constantly, but beneath the bickering are Harry and Kate rekindling their feelings?

I was enjoying this, it was a very typical romance with the mean pretty girls, a normal slightly geeky girl and the hot guy. Nothing amazing, but a fun read. Harry was the weak link for me, all the way through he seemed to want to keep the relationship with Kate on the downlow and generally seems a bit wet. Also, while I understand why Kate was angry about their near-kiss, I didn't understand why he was.

Anyway, it all degenerated for me towards the end when it suddenly all became Kate's fault, Cally trying to exclude her from the project - Kate's fault, Kate having to go to France for work on her friend's birthday - Kate's fault, Kate being royally shafted by Harry and Cally - Kate's fault, Kate being passed over for promotion time and time again - Kate's fault, all the catty comments and being ignored - all in Kate's imagination. Over and over again. No-one else was at fault for anything, no-one else had to go round begging for other peoples forgiveness. When an author does this it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like they dislike their main character, or indeed women in general. I think for this to work both parties need to have been at fault in some way and this was all Kate.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.



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