What a great book from Elizabeth. The story was a great contemporary romance read with plenty of drama and spice. I enjoyed the back and forth and the use of Twitter to narrate the story. I also liked how there wasn’t many other characters that we met fully so having them there in little bits helped the story. I also liked how the characters each had family issues at complete opposite ends of the spectrum of family issues. I could picture everything that was being described and really enjoyed the writing! Thank you to headline for the copy!

Actual rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

I’m a little conflicted with 'I Love You, I Hate You' because for all I love the rivals-to-lovers trope, I also despise the miscommunication trope…

Things I enjoyed though:

- The overall story, I liked that we learned more about Victoria and Owen which explains why they act the way they do. I love stories about lawyers too so that’s a plus.
- The humour, I found myself actually laughing out loud which is rare for me.
- The relationships, both Victoria and Owen and Nora and Luke. Although it would have been nice to get more of Nora and Luke, I feel we were more told about them being close instead of being shown it.
- The friends of Victoria and Owen, I just wish they had been in it a little more and maybe got to see them interact a bit more with the couple.

Again, I did overall enjoy the book but I feel the miscommunication wasn’t needed to make the story interesting. I feel it’s always a bit of a cheap shot to create tension.

'I Love You, I Hate You' by Elizabeth Davis is a fun, sexy enemies to lovers story that's heavily inspired by Nora Ephron's 'You've Got Mail'.

Opposing lawyers Victoria and Owen are enemies in the courtroom while being sexually attracted to each other, but unknowingly good pals on Twitter.

They're quintessentially opposites.

Victoria was raised by a working class single mum, while Owen is the product of a rich family, albeit with a father whose been married multiple times.

Victoria has to wear an 'ice queen' shield to get where she wants, while Owen is the cinnamon roll cat dad who has more privilege being male and upper class.

The spark between both of them was a joy to read. We know the inevitable is coming but the fun is waiting for it. This is what makes the enemies to lovers trope appealing and Davis has done this well.

Elizabeth Davis has made a name for herself as the Queen of Sizzle! This book was sexy and fun while channeling the fantastic film You've Got Mail. I loved the heat between Victoria and Owen, as well as the banter and trust between Nora and Luke (who, we all know, were Victoria and Owen!). I devoured this book and especially enjoyed the karaoke scene at the end.

My only pet peeve was how many times Victoria mentioned that she hated rich, white people (yet she lapped up the wine in Owen's cellar and the indoor pool). It became a bit repetitive, especially since she was trying to be a rich, white person herself with gunning for the job with the most money.

Shoutout for the great references to Peter Gallagher in While You Were Sleeping, The OC and Center Stage- all personal favorites!

I was immediately drawn to this book for two reasons: the cover and the enemies to lovers storyline. I was so excited to get started.

Unfortunately, I just couldn’t engage with the book. I wasn’t fond of the main characters and struggled to form an attachment to them, which I find really makes a book for me.

The authors writing style was good and the story flowed well.

I wanted to love this, and I did try to ‘get into it’ but couldn’t.

However, I think it’s important to note that every reader is different and many will love this book.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for my advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review 📚

2.5 ⭐️

From completely different backgrounds, Victoria and Owen are opposing lawyers and cannot stand each other until they end up falling into bed together and the world as they know it becomes a lot more complicated. When a big case comes up and they end up facing each other in court again it’s a battle to now allow their feelings to get involved.

Meanwhile they each have a confident on Twitter who they are able to be completely themselves with, without fear of judgement or ridicule and completely anonymous but would they like each other so much if they realized who the real people were behind the aliases.

This is the first book in a long time that has grabbed me and demanded my attention the entire way through.
I loved the characters and their own complexities, neither of them are without their faults but neither is anyone which made it feel all the more realistic.

I found myself emotionally invested to the very end and I absolutely adored it! I would love to see this made into a film!

I thought that this was a really good book!

The characters were strong and really well developed with some great interaction between them – I really enjoyed getting to know them as the book progressed.

It was a romantic and heart-warming read, perfect for the colder nights

It is 4 stars from me for this one – highly recommended!

Such a delightful story!
I love everything enemies to lovers and this book hit all the marks in my cards for a perfect romance. Great characters, greater banter and hilarious twists that kept me invested throughout the chapters at all times. I loved it.
I haven’t read other books by the author but now I’m so looking forward to read more because she becomes a must read for me.

This is the perfect, binge worthy enemies to lovers romcom!

I couldn’t put the book down. What would you do if the person you hate in real life is the person you speak to on a daily basis online - without you knowing!

It’s fun, entertaining and steamy - everything you want in this kind of book. The sex scenes are well written and felt like they served a purpose.

I also love that it had a proper plot, the main and side characters felt fleshed out and three dimensional.

Absolutely love it, highly recommend

This was sweet, and exactly the kind of easy reading I was going for. I read it in a single sitting! I love the classic enemies to lovers trope, although this one seemed to come around rather out of the blue and seemed unrealistic. But, further in I could get on board and they developed some chemistry.

There were different aspects to it that annoyed me, and I wasn’t a huge fan of the protagonist because she had some annoying traits but overall a decent fluffy read if that’s what you are looking for.

Okay, just to start off with - this book had my favourite trope and theme. Enemies to lovers but they’re lawyers!? Like when this arc got approved for me, I was SO happy because YES. I feel like this is a cute book. Although I’m not a fan of the inconsistent jumps in the layout and conversations, I really enjoyed that the characters didn’t suddenly drop all previous pretensions just because they kissed, or slept together. I liked that the book showed what-ifs and what-could-bes’ with the characters before giving them a reality check and made them actually deal with their situation. I do have to say, I was surprised that I didn’t feel attached to either character- they were I guess somehow truly in their own world for me to fall in love with them, like, yes, I enjoyed the plot and the theme, the characters were just two people I was reading about which is quite uncommon for me, but not unusual, so it’s safe to say that it was just a quick one time read for me for this one! Nevertheless, it was written incredibly well and I did indeed finish it in one sitting because I was too impatient to see how everything went down lol.

I love enemies to lovers. I love Nora Ephron movies. Based on the description this book looked like it would be a slam dunk for me. Sadly it was not.

This read like a rip-off of You've Got Mail (I read the acknowledgments I know this was inspired by the film, but too much of this felt like it was taken straight from the film) written by someone that hates white people, rich people, and ESPECIALLY rich white people. I appreciate when a book has diversity, I appreciate when a story is written to point out social injustices and help us learn from them and how to change them. That was not what I got from this book though.

I didn't actually see diversity in this book at all. The only ethnicity pointed out was that the two main characters are both white. There was one character that based on context clues I assumed was a person of color, but even that was not definitive. Early on in the novel Nora/Victoria rants about watching bad tv and hallmark movies with "blandly pretty" white people. Then she's gushing over Nora Ephron films never once pointing out that those movies are filled with predominantly white casts.

These grievances aside, this was hardly enemies to lovers as the two of them end up hooking up and experiencing feelings in Chapter One. Also, there are only so many times I can take the two main characters in a love story saying horrible awful things to one another and then coming back from it as if it never happened. Both individuals at some point come to the conclusion that their online relationships start to feel like cheating when they are together in person. Yet neither of them ever actually confront that situation or do anything about it. They just feel guilty and continue.

This book is not what I expected. I thought I'd be reading an enemies to lovers romance.

In real life, the MCs are opposing counsels. They seem to hate each other with a vengeance, yet they hate-f*** like bunnies.

Their virtual alter egos met on Twitter, where Victoria likes to rile up Internet trolls. They talk regularly and complain about their RL nemeses.

There is chemistry between the MCs, in both incarnations. However, the story felt convoluted due to all the online chats, the dialogue was clunky and the book felt much longer than it actually was.

I know where the story was supposed to go, but it didn't work for me.

Having been approved for this new romance on NetGalley, I was then contacted by the lovely Isabelle at Headline Eternal asking if I wanted to be part of the blog tour for it. After saying yes, I was sent this cute ARC through the post, so thank you for that!

Victoria and Owen are both good looking, successful lawyers and arch rivals. However, they can’t seem to deny the intense chemistry between them and this regularly leads to them ending up in bed together. However, they’re determined not to let their attraction from advancing their careers and battling it out in the court room. On Twitter, Nora and Luke are best friends. They tell each other things that neither of them can tell anyone else but Nora is insistent that it’s kept strictly online. When the truth comes out, everyone is about to discover that the line between love and hate is very thin indeed.

We know from the beginning that Nora and Luke are Victoria and Owen. While some readers might enjoy knowing something that the characters take their sweet time finding out, I think I would have liked being kept in the dark longer than I was. It would have added that extra fun mystery element to the book. Sure, it would have possibly been predictable anyway but I would have loved to have that thrill of figuring out whether I was right or not.

Victoria’s upbringing was quite Gilmore Girls-esque (her words). She has worked very hard to get to where she is and it’s understandable that she wants to protect that. It’s also understandable that she wants to take care of her mother. She has all the ingredients of being a romantic heroine that I could have really got behind and championed.

But she is incredibly conceited. She has an air of both ‘look how hot I am’ and ‘I’m not like other girls’ and it was so off-putting. I really didn’t like her sadly and it affected my enjoyment of the whole book.

There is a part of the book where Victoria admits that her job hurts people and that she is really only in it for the paycheck. As someone who could literally never do anything (especially a high-powered job like law) just for a good paycheck, I knew that I was never going to be able to relate to her. However, at this point, Victoria was starting to show redeeming features and I was very much in favour of her finding a better, kinder job.

There is commentary on the way that women are treated online and it’s something that I’m always happy to see addressed. Every woman who has had an online presence will have experienced some level of sexual harrassment at some point and men need to realise how common that is.

In contrast to the ice queen that is Victoria, Owen is portrayed as a warm cinnamon roll. He’s a cat dad, which is always a winner for me and he seems to be a hard worker, trying to break free from the rich kid label that has followed him his whole life. Although he is a hotshot lawyer, his humour comes through and he strangely seems to be a lot more down-to-earth than Victoria. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t been through much pain and hardship unlike her and a stark contrast between their personalities was essential to the story but he felt much more like a real human being than she did.

The romance is very hot and there are plenty of steamy sex scenes, so be aware of this. It is definitely a VERY adult romance and the electricity between them is obvious from the beginning. Davis is clearly very good at writing that indescribable spark of attraction that some couples have and I definitely believed that the sex was extremely satisfying for both partners.

I Love You, I Hate You isn’t quite an enemies-to-lovers story -it’s more of an enemies AND lovers story! While I did enjoy the romance itself, I wanted something more from the way it was written. It had the potential for a mystery element but appeared to miss it and I would have loved a more likeable, three-dimensional heroine.

Thank you so much for inviting me to be part of this tour. I absolutely loved this book. I read the majority of it, cuddled up on the sofa yesterday, waiting for the Sunday dinner to cook.

This book has=d everything that a rom com should have.

Working in law myself, I loved that the two main characters were lawyers. I loved being let into their legal world! The author has obviously done a lot of research, using the legal jargon and making you feel as though you were in the court room with the lawyers!

The book was so well written. The writing flowed so easily and was told from different points of views. It was such an easy, yet enjoyable read.

The book was fun, sassy and entertaining and I loved it!

Easily a 5 star read and perfect for anyone who loves a rom com!

This book was incredibly addictive and impossible to put down!!
It is told from the perspectives of both Owen and Victoria who have also formed an anonymous friendship on Twitter as Luke and Nora. I thought the writing was fun and definitely engaging throughout, I loved the use of Twitter DMs and always looked forward to those.
Seeing Victoria’s solid exterior break down as she opened up to Luke and spoke with her little group of online friends made me like her even more.
It became frustrating at times with the misunderstandings between Victoria and Owen and how neither of them was showing the other their real selves, but that just made the story more interesting.
I love a good romcom and ‘I Love You, I Hate You’, exceeded my expectations.
Thank you Headline Eternal for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Hachette UK for the chance to read this book.

You've Got Mail is a film that my boyfriend and I have watched religiously across our 8 year relationship. So having the chance to read I Love You, I Hate You left me breathless with excitement. Just like our main character, Victoria, I am a huge Nora Ephron fan. This book was not a disappointment.

I enjoyed the humour and warmth of the story as well as the well-rounded characters. The use of the Internet as a welcome home for Victoria and Owen was refreshing - its always seen as a negative space but Davis highlights that it is also a place where many of us have made friendships and lasting relationships.

The only drawback with this story is that it should have been so obvious to the characters that they were speaking to someone they already knew, but this didn't take away from the fun of the story.

You will enjoy this book if you liked The Hating Game/You've Got Mail/Dating You Hating You.

When the blurb about a book mentions You’ve Got Mail, a film I loved, Is always going to be one that I want to pick up. I Love You I Hate You by @elizabethdavis is the perfect rom-com to curl up with for a few hours - an entertaining enemies to lovers story that moves the film concept into the social media era with Twitter at the heart of it.

Victoria and Owen are lawyers who find themselves on opposing sides - and they couldn’t be more different in terms of background and values. Despite that there is incredible sexual chemistry which risks making life complicated. Thank goodness they have an online friend to unload to - but the trouble is they have no idea that their on-line persona - Nora and Luke - are the same two people who are trying to deny their real-life attraction. Aa the trust is revealed, and their careers continue to put them on opposing side, what does that mean for their relationship?

I loved getting to know the two main characters as we hear from both points of view and they were both interesting characters - Victoria had o learn to let down her walls and Owen was refreshingly willing to admit his mistakes. The chemistry between them is undeniable - and there is no shortage of steamy moments. I loved the 90s music references and it proved to be a perfect escapism easy read - I look forward to reading more by Elizabeth Davis.

Review: I LOVE YOU, I HATE YOU by Elizabeth Davis

⭐️ rating: 4
🔥 steam: 4
📚 genre: romance
📖 pages: 450
🍾 pub date: October 12, 2021

I LOVE YOU, I HATE YOU is a modern spin on “You’ve got mail” and it’s a delightful rom-com for all fans of epistolary romance and Nora Ephron!

I read it in one day and for me, it has everything I look for in a rom-com: friendship, lust, hate, love, and unforgettable characters. I especially loved Victoria, with her anxieties and vulnerability, her heart-wrenching past and her need to prove herself - while also hiding herself away from possible hurt. Also, did I mention that this book is HELLA feminist? From her online crusades, to her twitter support group, to choosing herself first, Victoria was a really likeable, relatable character, and I enjoyed reading about her and her way to her HEA.

Recommended? YES, if you’re looking for a fun, fast, and steamy read (and let’s be honest, who isn’t!). Elizabeth Davis is an author I will be looking out for in the future.

If there’s one thing that I like doing, it’s discovering new authors. Elizabeth Davis is certainly a new author for me. I read the synopsis for ‘I Love You, I Hate You’ and it certainly sounded like the sort of read I needed at that moment in time- a fun, light hearted, escapist type of read. Well it was certainly all that and so much more. I thoroughly enjoyed ‘I Love You, I Hate You’ but more about that in a bit.

I loved the character of Victoria and I warmed to her from the start. She is a canny young lady, who works hard in her role as a lawyer. She certainly knows her stuff and she is good at what she does. The only little blip is the fact that she doesn’t always agree with her employer’s stance on certain matters. Victoria has one adversary in particular that she doesn’t like and that’s Owen. He certainly knows how to get under her skin. I get the impression that both Victoria and Owen enjoy the challenge of trying to get one over the other. However, there’s a fine line between love and hate. When does one become the other so to speak. I won’t go too far into what happens between the two of them because I would hate to spoil the story for anybody. There are a few surprises along the way.

It took me no time at all to get into ‘I Love You, I Hate You’. In fact the bright and breezy cover was enough to grab my attention, the synopsis drew me in and the story between the covers just sealed the deal as it were. I found it rather difficult to put the book down for any length of time. I would pick the book up only intending to read a couple of chapters but I would become so wrapped up in the story that I would still be sat there reading many chapters later. I had a gut feeling as to what was going to happen so of course I had to keep reading to see if I was on the right track or if I had wandered down another path entirely. The more of the story I read, the more I wanted to read and the quicker the pages seemed to turn. All too quickly I reached the end of the story and I had to say goodbye to Victoria and Owen. I found ‘I Love You, I Hate You’ to be a refreshing read, which would be perfect escapist reading. The story gripped me from start to finish.

‘I Love You, I Hate You’ is superbly written. I had real trouble believing that this book was the owner’s debut romantic comedy as her writing style is so polished and so confident. The author certainly knows how to grab the reader’s attention and draw them into what proves to be one hell of a story. For me the story hit the ground running and maintained a fairly gentle pace throughout. I loved the characters in this story. Elizabeth describes the characters so well and so vividly that they seem just as real as you and I. I started chuckling away to myself at the beginning of the story and I didn’t stop chuckling until the moment I read the last word on the last page. I felt as though I was part of the story and that’s thanks to Elizabeth’s very vivid and realistic storytelling.

In short, I thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘I Love You, I Hate You’ and I would recommend it to other readers. I will most definitely be reading more of Elizabeth’s work in the future. The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is a very well deserved 5* out of 5*.