Imme van Gorp's Reviews > They Hate Each Other

|| 2.0 stars ||

Disclaimer: This is honestly going to be more of a rant than an actual review, because I was just really in the mood for some unedited venting.
Also, more importantly, I will be hating on one of the main characters, so I’m sorry if I’ll offend anyone with that.

Okay, so first of all, this really wasn’t much of a romance and mostly just felt like a big trauma dump. It kinda seemed like the main characters were in constant competition about who had it the hardest in life, which I found… unsettling. Especially since that was all they seemed to be doing. Literally. Nothing else happens in this book other than brooding, misery and trauma. So it’s clearly not much of a romance, even though it’s packaged as such.

The idea of this book is that we have two guys, Jonah and Dylan, who cannot stand each other at all, but they’re in the same friend group so they have to hang out more often than they would like. It’s a classic enemies-to-lovers trope. However, the issue for me was that one of them was the clear problem in their relationship. I’ll explain. Okay, so Jonah is an extravert teenager who has to take care of his younger sisters because his mother is dead and his father is an absent drunk. His life pretty much sucks. He has to play at parent even though he’s a kid himself, he has to work more hours than is legally allowed, he hardly ever eats because he has no money for it, and he can never let himself be sad because he has to be strong for his sisters. As you can probably guess, this guy is under a lot of stress and suffers from a lot of pain, and he never takes time for himself.
Okay, so then now imagine that during the few moments where Jonah does finally get to hang out with his friends and be himself, there is this judgemental, rich, arrogant arsehole who is constantly berating him for being “too loud” and shaming him for wanting “too much attention”. Like fucking excuse me!? And take in mind: Jonah never really did anything to Dylan to deserve this treatment. Jonah just existed, and tried to do the best he could with the shitty cards he’d been dealt, and yet, he still had to suffer through this constant judgement from Dylan FOR NO REASON. Trust me when I tell you I would have done far worse than tease Dylan for being uptight like Jonah did. I would have freaked out on that prick. So yea. Dylan was 100% the problem for me, which is never a good start for an enemies-to-lovers trope, since I’d prefer for both of them to be equally at fault. And preferably, for neither of them to be this unreasonably insufferable.

Anyway, there’s like this elaborate scheme going on in this book where Dylan and Jonah decide to fake-date to get their friends off their backs about saying they should be together. Why Jonah’s friends ever thought Dylan would be perfect for him is beyond me, but whatever. That’s not the point, I guess.
So yes, they start fake-dating. Which should be a fun trope, but was the absolute exact opposite. Their fake-dating felt extremely mechanical, and really lacked any kind of passion or tension. The only time they let themselves get real with each other was when Jonah was functioning as Dylan’s semi-therapist, and there’s not much to their interactions besides that. They truly had no chemistry whatsoever and everything about their dynamic was just bland.

As I think I have made pretty clear already: I really disliked Dylan. He was grumpy in an energy-draining kind of way, and I really struggled to find anything about him I could find charming. It also didn’t help that he lacked the usual protectiveness that goes with grumpy characters. He was actually painfully selfish and self-absorbed. He got pissy about EVERYTHING, and he had the nerve to get offended over every single little thing, even though he was the biggest judgemental arsehole on the planet.
Also, Dylan’s thoughts about Jonah always made me a bit sad. He never appreciated him, and he never stopped judging him. Not when they started getting to know each other better, and not even when they got together. Dylan seemed to have minimal amounts of sympathy and understanding for Jonah, and his thoughts about him were always so dismissive and diminishing. It was just sad, and Jonah deserved so much more than that.

I mean, even the third-act break-up just made me so ANGRY.
Dylan never even considered helping Jonah with his home-life during all the years he’s known him (because he was always too far up his own arse), but when he finally does, he decides to do it in the most invasive and deceitful way possible. He does it in a way that makes Jonah feel betrayed and extremely scared he is going to loose his sisters. And so when Jonah gets (rightfully) angry about that, Dylan stomps on him a bit harder and completely crushes his feelings. And what do you think Dylan does after that? Grovel? Feel guilty? Try to make sure Jonah is alright? No, of course not. He decides to leave for the week and spend time solving his OWN issues. Because this is the perfect time for that, obviously. And he feels just perfectly fine and happy during this time. Just peachy. And when he finally reaches out to Jonah again, it’s because he wants to talk about his OWN issues AGAIN…
Seriously, Dylan might have possibly been the most self-absorbed character I’ve read about in quite some time.

The only highlight in this book was Jonah and especially his relationship with his little sisters. I really liked Jonah, and my heart broke for his situation. I felt so much warmth for the way he was always there for them in every way. But not only that; he was very perceptive of every other person around him, and he was actually very kind and helpful. The fact that he was able to do this while he was under so much stress himself was super admirable. I mean, he was always there for Dylan, and he always noticed when Dylan needed comfort or help (which was pretty much the opposite of what this guy gave him in return, but whatever… I went on a rant about that long enough).

All in all, this book brought out a lot of annoyance for me, and it’s mostly due to Dylan being absolutely insufferable and mind-bogglingly self-absorbed.