Christina Lauren is pretty popular around these parts, and Dating You / Hating You seems to top most lists. The only book I’ve read from the collection is the one that started it all, Beautiful Bastard, and let’s just say I wasn’t a fan. So I broke up with CL and the Beautiful series, and didn’t give it another thought, until Dating You / Hating You was free on the library website, and since all of you guys seemed to like it, I thought I’d give it another shot.
And it wasn’t too awful.
Carter and Evie are both talent agents at rival companies, and after they have an extremely awkward meeting at a mutual friend’s Halloween party, they decide to give dating a chance, even though they are rivals in the same cut-throat profession. But before they can have date number two (and before they can have full on sexy times together), they discover that their agencies have merged, and now they’re both fighting for the same job.
Evie is very good at her job. Carter is also very good. He’s five years younger and has less connections, but since he’s got out outdoor plumbing while Evie has indoor, he’s naturally a shoo-in for the position because Evie’s boss is a big fat corrupt jackass. He pits Evie and Carter against one another, and shenanigans of the mad-cap, screwball, 1940s comedy varieties ensue. In the meantime, their feelings for one another are growing stronger and harder to resist.
Amid the pranks and sabotage, Evie begins to realize, with the help of her friends, that Bossman is embezzling funds, and she – without Carter – sets a trap for him. Of course there’s a happy ever after ending and all that jazz, but what I liked the best about this book was that Evie took down her corrupt boss without Carter coming in to save the day. In fact, there’s a snippet of dialogue between Evie and her friends where they specifically ask whether she’s looped Carter in on the plan, and she says no, that she’s going to do it on her own. And in 2017, that sounds just about right to me.
More reviews found here.
From everything I’ve read by Christina Lauren, Beautiful Bastard is easily their weakest book (as it’s their first, it’s only natural that they’d get better as they kept writing). If that had been my first book by them, I doubt I would have kept reading. I started with their second series, Wild Seasons, which starts out ok with Sweet Filthy Boy and then pretty much gets stronger with each successive book. So if you’re interested in checking out some of their GOOD books, that’s where I’d steer you.
Yeah, that’s why I finally picked this up. All you guys seemed to like them, and for the most part, I’ve thought you guys have been right. Maybe the Beautiful series gets better after that first one. I need something fun for over Christmas, so that might do the trick.