HATE CRUSH
Genre: Forbidden, Erotic Romance
Author: A. Zavarelli
Release Date: November 21, 2019
They call him the devil.
When I crash-landed into him on my first day at Loyola Academy, I was sure that couldn’t be true.
He was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in real life.
Little did I know he was also the cruelest.
I went from starstruck to stunned the moment his cynical eyes cut through me.
I can’t tell you what it was that made him want to punish me. But from that day forward the brooding recluse of a man made it his goal to torment me.
I want to loathe him, and some days, I do.
But good or bad, nobody’s attention has ever tasted so sweet.
What do you do when you have a hate crush on your bully?
Worse yet, what do you do when he’s also your teacher?
There’s something about Stella that makes me believe she will always go the extra mile to seek approval from those with authority. I can see it every time she looks at me. And before the end of the hour, I’ve made up my mind. In the past, I picked easy, obvious targets for my projects. Without fail, they failed me. They couldn’t withstand the expectations of their peers and their family and the machine that is Loyola Academy.
But Stella won’t fail. I feel it deep in my gut. A spark of hope that I haven’t had with any of the others. A want I haven’t experienced since my own college days. I will push her harder than I’ve pushed anyone else before her, and she will cling to hold onto herself in the face of any storm I might bring her way. I will open her eyes to the realities of this world. And in the end, she will despise me for my ruthlessness, but she will be grateful.
Stella LeClaire, welcome to my final project.
I want to eat her alive and right now, she can sense that. But I’ll never admit it. I’ll never admit that she gets to me. I just need her to know that she’s mine toy with for as long as I want, and that’s all there is to be said about it.
I love me some A. Zavarelli. The woman knows how to right books that just hit the spot for me each and every single time. There’s something about her writing that’s like catnip for me. I don’t even bother to read the blurbs to her books, they’re an auto add for me. But when I read the blurb for this one, I just about had a heart attack in my desperate need to get my hands on it. Forbidden, student/teacher romance with a splash of enemies to lovers and Zavarelli’s signature dark grit? GOD YES. Sign me up!
I was so conflicted with my rating on this one, I sat on it a full two days trying to make up my mind. On the one hand, I binge read it. Like completely incapable of putting it down sort of binge read it. On the other hand, there were elements and parts that just didn’t quite do it for me. Did I enjoy it? Hell, yes!!! Was it perfect for me? Not quite. Would I recommend it? Totally!
So what worked for me? The set up. GAH! Delicious. Sebastian is a teacher in a prestigious boarding school. His reputation for being a tough a-hole on his students is almost as big as the one for his looks. He’s the a-hole of Loyola Academy and he has no problems with that. Stella is the sweet and innocent fly that’s about to step into the spider’s web, thought she’s not quite as innocent as she looks. A product of two barely functioning parents, she just got transferred to the prestigious school because that’s what her parents decided was best to her. With a functioning drunk of a mother and a father barely seeing day light in order to keep them in the moneyed life style her mother has become accustomed to, Stella is surprisingly functional. But when she gets on the radar of the ruthless teacher and batting off the vicious verbal attacks from her fellow students, she can’t help but show a vulnerable underbelly. The spark between her and Sebastian is instant, but their connection is completely forbidden. While Sebastian fights it with everything he’s got in his a-hole artillery, Stella is determined to break his iron control.
Admittedly, the characters felt a little underdeveloped. I wished they were further fleshed out, because I would have been HERE FOR IT. As it was, I felt like I was getting a small snippet of who they were with a lot of the development and backstory happening off the pages. I also struggled with Stella being as passive as she was. She forgave Sebastian and everything he did so easily, I wanted to shake her at times. I wanted her to make him WORK for it. And while I love me a domineering and dominant alpha man as much as the next girl, Stella’s passiveness kinda killed the buzz for me a bit.
Don’t get me wrong, I really did enjoy this book. It wasn’t perfect, but it was still an addictive read. I just can’t help but wish it had another 100 pages to it. It was still a fun read and one I’d certainly recommend it.
A. Zavarelli is a USA Today and Amazon bestselling author.
She likes all things chocolate, books that come with warnings, and putting her characters through hell. Her tales have been known to flirt with darkness and sometimes court it unabashedly altogether. Revenge themes and tortured souls are her favorites to write and this gives her an excuse to watch bizarre and twisted documentaries in her spare time.
She currently lives in the Northwest with her lumberjack and an entire brood of fur babies.
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