My feelings for this book are a little confusing and I found that writing the review about the book was a lot harder than it should have been.

To summarise what’s going on Penny Miller is a quiet, unsuspecting young woman who lives with her grandmother in a building that isn’t quite anybody’s first choice. She works at the library and then at a bar at night. Penny has a stalker, of sorts, who threatens and scares her and while she can handle him, he still scares her. Then she meets Marcus Drake. He’s tall, muscular and fresh out of prison. Marcus is a bit of a conundrum - both to Penny and the reader - because he’s got all these secrets and he’s rough and rude. But he’s also the kind of man that your eyes and your body lean towards because of his imposing size and his lack of interest in pretty much everything around him. Everything about Marcus screams ‘bad boy’ and like any unsuspecting woman, Penny is drawn to him.

Right off the bat, Marcus is horrible to Penny. He says nasty things and he keeps breaking her spirit, but Penny is pretty resilient. She’s not going to let this ex-convict try to destroy her. She takes control of the situation, she makes the most of having Marcus living in the same building as her. He becomes her bodyguard, a security blanket of sorts and despite his interest in her, Marcus accepts the job. There are pages and pages of them just fighting with each other and while it gets tiresome after a point, what really stood out to me was just how strong and powerful Penny is. Marcus can’t break her as much as he’d like to, because nothing can break Penny, not after everything she’s gone through.

I didn’t like Marcus, for so many reasons, but I absolutely loved Penny. Yes, she’s easily infatuated by him, but as a young woman who hasn’t had a lot of interactions with men like him, you can’t really blame her. Marcus comes into her life at a time when she’s just giving up on everything and quite honestly, you don’t hold it against her for not being more careful. Marcus takes advantage of everything Penny gives him and eventually, he hurts her, as you’d imagine. I’m not a big fan of love at first sight, but given that you see all of this happen through Penny, it’s not as annoying as I thought it would be. Penny feels so much for Marcus that she’s willing to do whatever it takes to soften him up a little. And it works, to an extent.

What did annoy me was the changing POV with each chapter. Penny’s chapters are all in third person, while Marcus gets first person. Plus, after seeing everything happen through Penny’s eyes, you get to see the same thing unravel through Marcus’ and that was a little confusing at first.

The plot and the book had the potential to be so much more and maybe that got lost in translation, but it was interesting.

This book is very different and in some spots the writing is awkward ... but that could be in the translation of the book to English. I really felt sorry for Penny having to work 2 jobs and look after her Grandmother. I just couldn’t see what she saw in Marcus because he kept telling her that Francisco was his true love and he treated Penny like crap! It took me a really long time not to hate him and he never did win me all the way over. I found myself skimming the book at times because it moved slow, but the last part of the book had my full attention.

I received an early copy courtesy of Amazon Publishing UK through NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.

This was a bit so-so with me, it was okay, but it definitely wasn't great. I quickly got bored of Penny allowing Marcus to treat her like crap. Generally a bit of a frustrating read to be honest.

Ok I love enemies to lovers story, and I tend to like jerks who eventually redeemed themselves, however this was not it.  First Penny was weak, let him treat her like crap, knew about his manhorish ways. Marcus was a jerk and stayed that way, I personally hated him, and disliked Penny because she should know she could do better. And to top it all off I felt like sybil with multiple personalities since that it how I read it, there were too many peoples thoughts. So all in all I hated it. Read something else unless you want to read nothing but a whole lot of sex and no redeeming qualities.

This was an enjoyable quick read but fairly formulaic.  Penny's relationship with her grandmother is lovely and adds depth to the story, but Marcus's propensity for casual sex and plan to wait for his "true love" Francisca to get out of jail seem absurd at times.  If either one of them had actually said what they really thought it would be a different story.

Complementary copy given for honest review and opinion. I was not really impressed with this book. The translation lost some of its grammar. I did not like the author throwing in politics into the book.

Overall it was a good book and I enjoyed a lot of it, but I have some big problems:
1) The writing style. I don't know if maybe I wasn't paying too much attention to what was happening, but the story was confusing and hard to understand some times. It was also a little repetitive.
2) the romance pace. Our heroine falls in love quite quickly, which make it kinda unbelievable. Perhaps this also has to do with the fact that it is classified as "romance" but I would say that it is more like an erotic novel.
3) our hero. Not that I didn't like him as a character, but some of the things he said... yikes. This is directly related to the fact that it is an erotic novel and that is not my forte and it made me a bit uncomfortable, but it is totally in me.
4) an epilogue is necessary.

I had a great time reading this book but unfortunately I had some issues.
Both POV's were written really different.Penny's story was in third person and Marcus in first. I didn't understood the reason behind this. 

Marcus was a not a good person at all! 3/4 of the book he refers to penny in such a despicable way. Every time was to say something disrespectful. 
Penny wasn't my cup of the either. She was in love so quickly with this horrible man that only spoke horrible things to her. As I read I was just thinking first love yourself before this scumbag. She didn't believe in herself and that really bothered me.

Taking that aside, I liked the story and the different characters where lovely (except of course Grant and Francisca)

First and foremost thank you for the opportunity to read this book.

While I enjoyed it, it was a fairly easy read, I feel there could of been more story development from Marcus' POV. The story almost seemed to develop entirely through Penny alongside pretty much the same 'I am an arsehole' narrative from Marcus. 

I don't have too much more to say! It was a nice story line, the translation slightly off in places but hopefully this will be reviewed by the time of publishing. All round I think this book would give way to a second book that has good potential.

𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰: ⁣
Gonna keep this short and sweet! I rated this ⭐️⭐️.5/5 stars!⁣
I started reading this and actually wasn’t a huge fan... It was cheesy, childish, and seemed to have a lot of pointless drama. It almost seemed like the beginning half of the book had been written by a teenager and then the last half was written by someone more mature. I think the last 40% of the book redeemed it for me and I ended up liking the way it ended! It wasn’t a perfect love story by any means but I tend to enjoy that more than the unrealistic fairy tale ones anyways. ⁣
Overall, not the best romance I’ve ever read but certainly not the worst! I also want to note that this was originally written in Italian and some of the charm of the book could’ve potentially been lost in the translation. ⁣
⁣
𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐨 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐲, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐫, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰. 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐲 𝐨𝐰𝐧! ⁣
⁣

#Trying Not To Love You #NetGalley.  This was a story about a small town girl named Penny who has the responsibility of taking care of her grandmother who has dementia.  She hasn’t had much luck with a relationship and she works at a bar.  She meets the new tenant in her building, Marcus.  He has a bad boy swag, tatted and muscled up. Together they help each other fill the void that is missing in their lives.  I enjoyed reading this modern day romance with some steamy erotica.  I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book was an okay read for me.  I feel like there may have been some of the story lost in translation.  I did not like the characters all that much, especially Marcus, but I was able to finish the book.  It could definitely use an epilogue.  Overall, I don't know that I would read it again, but it was an somewhat enjoyable book.  It had the potential to be more, but it fell a little short for me. 

Thanks so NetGalley and Montlake for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am sorry to say this book just wasn’t for me.  I am not sure why, but I just could not get into the characters and so it just wasn’t that enjoyable for me. 

Thank you Net, Montlake and Amabile Giusti for the ARC.

I really enjoyed this book although I had a few issues with it like how fast the girl was in love with the guy at the beginning AND I really think this book needs an epilogue but overall I still had a good time reading this.
Thank you netgalley for give me a digital copy.

Trying Not to Love You by Amabile Giusti is a romance book that was translated into English.
I honestly had a hard time getting into this book.  I think maybe details were lost in the translation. It is a story about a girl named Penny, she works in a bar but also takes care of her Gran who suffers from dementia. 

I think the idea of the story had potential but it was missing something.

ARC provided from Netgalley  in exchange for an honest review

I was pretty excited to read this on because I thought I'd really connect and like the main character. Instead this turned out to be more erotica than romance. That's not an issue except when you're in the mood for a romance and end up with a lot of nakedness.

Alright, so this doesn’t really seem like a romance. It reads more like erotica, and maybe I just didn’t really enjoy this book because the translation was rough? I think it had potential, but it faltered in regards to the normal expectations I have for romance. Dunno, but maybe this would work better labeled as erotica or fiction because the romance in this wasn’t strong or appealing by any means.

The POVs were odd as well. Penny was third person. Marcus was first. Then there was random people at times, and I couldn’t figure out what was supposed to be happening??? I don’t know how a romance can work when the POvs don’t match. It just gets confusing and I ended up like annoyed it wasn’t following the standard conventions of a book. Either do first person or third, not both.

Penny also has no backbone. She falls in love with Marcus despite his horrible treatment. He’s kind of emotionally abusive and she is just like yeah okay. He has sex with other girls and she knows about this. Okay and he has a girlfriend in prison and she still wants to be with him? No. That’s not how this all works. I was so mad about that mess. I want strong heroines, not ones that just decide a bad boy is their HEA. 

Marcus is gross, and I didn’t like him. Bad boys are overdone and he wasn’t special. Yeah he had a bad life, but I’ve read so many books like this where there’s a redemption arc but this was just a bad dude who wasn’t worth his weight in gold or feathers.

Maybe it was a rough translation.... maybe it should have just been an erotic romance. I dunno. This didn’t work for me. 

Thank you NetGalley and Montlake for the advanced review copy. All thoughts and opinions are own.

Okay, so I finished reading this romantic fiction, a steamy one. I like reading love stories. And I like the plot of Trying Not to Love You. It has potential. It's a translated work and like the writing style, even though certain chapters are too descriptive. But as I kept reading, two things started to bother me:

1. Portrayal of Marcus. It's hard to like a love story if I don't like the male protagonist. And I didn't really like the portrayal of this character in the beginning. The kind of things he says...Maybe it's translation or Or maybe it was done on purpose to make it a little erotic, but it really bothered me. However, his behaviour changes with time, transforms in fact...But you know what I mean. 

2. The PoV. The story has been told from multiple points of view (mainly dual). I understand that a story told from multiple PoV has its own advantage and purpose but what annoyed me is, the same scenes have been told from the different points of view. It makes it repetitive, so much that sometimes I skipped certain pages, almost sure that I could read the same thing from Marcus's point of view. And I wasn't wrong.

Overall, it was a quick, entertaining. At certain places, it's really nice. I liked the ending. You would like it if you like reading romance, and if could ignore above mentioned points. 

Thank you, Netgalley for the ARC.

I read this book really quickly but I’m not sure I’d say it was all that enjoyable. I didn’t like the repetition of having POV from Marcus after having read it all once already.
I get the broken bad boy is a great romance character but this version wasn’t appealing to me.
I did enjoy their romance and the HEA ending

My apologies but this book did not capture my interest and I gave up and did not finish about 1/3rd of the way through the book. I love books that are romances with a hint of danger but this one just did not capture my interest. My apologies.