Christina Lauren is the pen name of writing partners/best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA Today, and #1 internationally bestselling authors of twenty-eight books, including the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, The Unhoneymooners, Love and Other Words, In a Holidaze, and The Soulmate Equation. Find them at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com or @ChristinaLauren on Instagram and Twitter. You can find more of my reviews of their work here.
Despite the odds stacked against them after an embarrassing meet-awkward at a mutual friend's Halloween party, Carter and Evie immediately hit it off. Even the realization that they're both high-powered agents at competing firms in Hollywood isn't enough to squash the fire. But when their two agencies merge—causing the pair to vie for the same position—all bets are off. What could have been a beautiful, blossoming romance turns into an all-out war of sabotage. Carter and Evie are both thirtysomething professionals—so why can't they act like it? Whether these two love-hate birds get the storybook Hollywood ending or just a dramedy of epic proportions, you get to enjoy Christina Lauren's heartfelt, hilarious story of romance in the modern world.
This book is so compulsively readable—something about Christina Lauren's prose makes it literally impossible to want to put the book down. I read Dating You / Hating You in less than a day, and I think that's just because all the stages of the book progressed so naturally. I felt the chemistry between Evie and Carter at the Halloween party, and of course they'd end up working together and how that would turn into a prank game, and how does it end? I think Christina Lauren does a great job really pulling readers along by making them wonder what will happen next, and this book especially is a great example of how natural that progression feels. It makes for a book that is so hard to put down!
I actually didn't love The Hating Game as much as I thought I would based on how other people spoke about it, but I did love Dating You / Hating You more. I think it's because Evie and Carter had a shot at a relationship before they started working together, and because Christina Lauren takes the time to develop the workplace more. Evie and Carter did try to date before they realized they worked together, and this colored the pranks in an interesting light. Rather than just flat out hating each other, that attraction was always present, rather than something that had to be uncovered. The two also work at an incredibly sexist workplace, where their boss celebrates Carter more than Evie, only because he's a man. It's disgusting, and Christina Lauren does a great job developing how that affects the way they work together and the ending.
The only reason this isn't a five star read for me is because the language sometimes felt juvenile. I think this is just before Christina Lauren hit their contemporary romance stride, and some of the wording doesn't feel like it aged well. On top of that, I don't think Evie and Carter advanced into being in love as naturally as all the other plot points did; it rather came as a surprise, without as much development as I would have liked to make it believable. But it truly didn't hinder any enjoyment of the book, or the ability to fall into this Hollywood-style romance, which has plenty of romance, false starts, and, of course, a bit of espionage there at the end.
Christina Lauren has so many other books I can't wait to dive into! Until then, you can find them at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com or @ChristinaLauren on Instagram and Twitter. You can find more of my reviews of their work here.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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