I have been WAITING to read this book and write this review for SO LONG. I’m still not even sure why I waited so long to read it in the first place, but I read it, and it was exactly what I needed at the time. I am so excited to talk about this. So excited.
In Hurts to Love You, Evangeline Chandler is an heiress to the Chandler company and fortune. She’s always been well put together and poised. But after trying to break up her older brother’s relationship, she decided to take a step back from the company and figure things out on her own. So she’s been hanging out at the apartment she shares with her longtime roommate and sparsely driving for a rideshare company. But she only ever has one customer when she drives. Gabe. Her brother’s best friend. The person she really can’t have feelings for… not that it’s stopping her.
Gabriel Hunter is the adopted son of the Kane’s housekeeper, and a tattoo artist by trade. He’s been part of the Kane and Chandler families since he was a kid. But he has two secrets, both of which are eating him alive. First, that he is the biological son of Robert Kane, and he orchestrated the adoption to protect him from his birth mother. And second, that he’s got a thing for the littlest Chandler.
Nick and Livvy’s wedding forces Eve and Gabe into the same house, where it doesn’t take long for them to realize the attraction is mutual. Eve holds Gabe’s family secret with care, and Gabe makes Eve see her own worth. But can they survive the fallout when all of these well-kept secrets come to light?
3 Things I Loved
- Gabe. Gabe is my second favorite type of romance hero (behind the grump) – the big, burly teddy bear. And to make him even more endearing to me, he’s a tattoo artist! And he’s got family secrets! And a secret crush on Eve! Basically every detail about Gabe made me love him as a character and a romantic hero.
- Eve’s growth (and Eve in general). I remember really disliking Eve in the first book in the trilogy (see review of Hate to Want You!), but once I got some context as to why she did what she did, she became more endearing. Maybe that’s part of why I took some time before starting this book. I wanted to forget why I didn’t like Eve for a while. And I’m glad I waited, because I really REALLY loved her arc here. She went from an abused daughter to an empowered woman, and it was a joy to read.
- The supporting characters. Having read the previous two books in the series a while back, it was nice to be revisited by the characters I loved so much in those books. Which was basically all of them. ❤
Dislikes/Problematic Content
Alisha Rai is really good about making her works diverse and representative, so I don’t have anything to complain about there. I obviously hated how Eve’s dad treated her at the beginning, but Eve’s character arc took care of that. There was one scene where Gabe kind of jumped in and tried to save her when she didn’t need it, but he realized he shouldn’t have and that was also resolved on the page. I don’t know. Am I missing anything? Because I basically remember just loving this one.
Rating
A reminder of the rating scale:
- Red = DNF, I hated everything
- Orange = Ugh, no thank you
- Yellow = I mean, I’ve read worse, but there were problems
- Green = This was good!
- Blue = Oh my gosh, I loved this book!
- Purple = This is the unicorn of books and I will be rereading it until the binding falls apart and EVERYONE should be reading it!
I think it’s pretty easy to see that I love this book. I love this trilogy. Really, I love Alisha Rai as a whole. So I’m definitely giving this Hurts to Love You a BLUE rating. I love everything about everything when it comes to this book. ❤
I finished another series this year! Hurray! Onward!
Happy reading!
Snark & Squee 