Hate to Want You (Forbidden Hearts, #1)

by Alisha Rai

[Rowena]

I’ve been hearing such good things about this book from all over blog land so I’ve been curious about it for a while. I’ve always been a chicken to trying new to me authors so I dragged my feet on getting this book even though some of my most trusted book bloggers adored it. I’m super glad that I finally got around to reading it because I really liked both Nicholas and Livvy.

Nicholas Chandler and Livvy Kane are childhood sweethearts who were ripped apart by a family scandal that changes the course of both of their lives. Nicholas has to live with the havoc that the actions of his father created for the Kane family while dealing with the death of his mother. Livvy, on the other hand, has to deal with not being rich anymore, the death of her father and losing her boyfriend all in one fell swoop. She also has to deal with the fact that her brother was accused of starting the fire that burned down what used to be her family business before her mother sold their family’s portion to her boyfriend’s father.

Their emotional connection to each other has never gone away and because of this, they meet in secret, once a year, for a night of pleasure. They don’t reach out to the other any of the other days of the year but on that one night, they belong to each other.

They kept their arrangement up for ten years and then Livvy stopped contacting Nick and she stopped showing up. Nick wasn’t happy about that and when Livvy comes back to town to help her ailing mother, Nick can’t stay away. He has questions and nobody can answer those questions but Livvy.

Livvy needed a clean break to try to move on from Nick. She needed to be strong in that decision but when her mother gets hurt and Livvy heads home to help her recover, she knew the Nicholas merry go round would swing back her way and while she thought she was prepared to face him, who was she kidding? The Nick and Livvy train has never truly left the station.

The romance between Nick and Livvy was believable and it was filled to the brim with drama. I thought Rai handled that drama well. Between their family drama, there was drama between the two of them that needed to be handled and I enjoyed seeing them both work through their shit to get to that happy ending.

I liked that Rai packed a lot of drama into this one book. Nick had his own share of shit to sort through, same with Livvy and then they both had their shared shit and then their individual family shit, it’s all in here. Some of the drama will be carried on to the other books in this series but there’s a lot here for you to eat up and enjoy. I did. I’m looking forward to the next book.

Oh, you know what I liked about this book and seriously, in this series? How diverse the characters are. I don’t normally notice those things in other books but I liked seeing Livvy’s Japanese and Hawaiian background showcased in this book.

Overall, I’m really glad that I started this series because this first book was a good start to a very promising series. I enjoyed the main couple, the secondary characters and I really enjoyed seeing everything come together. The pacing and Rai’s writing style is easy to fall into it and I just liked the whole thing. I’m totally jumping right into the next book right now. I definitely recommend.

Grade: 4 out of 5