Review: You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle

YOU DESERVE EACH OTHER
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Author: Sarah Hogle
Release Date: April 7, 2020

Naomi Westfield has the perfect fiancé: Nicholas Rose holds doors open for her, remembers her restaurant orders, and comes from the kind of upstanding society family any bride would love to be a part of. They never fight. They’re preparing for their lavish wedding that’s three months away. And she is miserably and utterly sick of him.

Naomi wants out, but there’s a catch: whoever ends the engagement will have to foot the nonrefundable wedding bill. When Naomi discovers that Nicholas, too, has been feigning contentment, the two of them go head-to-head in a battle of pranks, sabotage, and all-out emotional warfare.

But with the countdown looming to the wedding that may or may not come to pass, Naomi finds her resolve slipping. Because now that they have nothing to lose, they’re finally being themselves–and having fun with the last person they expect: each other.

When your nemesis also happens to be your fiancé, happily ever after becomes a lot more complicated in this wickedly funny, lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy debut.

AMAZON 

Through the windshield, he murders me with his eyes. He’s got his entire soul compressed right up against his irises and they’re the color of hatred. They desperately want telekinetic powers so they can blow me into the sky, through the fabric of our universe and into another one. I hope it’s a parallel universe with a parallel Nicholas and Naomi. I want to torture him with two of me.

Truth be told I struggled with my rating for this book. A lot. I’m blown away that this was Sarah’s debut novel. I was immediately hooked when I read the blurb. It was something refreshingly different in the lover to enemies to lovers trope. I mean, an engaged couple, in a battle of wills, a la War of Roses, to see who calls off their doomed relationship first? A grumpy heroine, a snooty hero, meddling parents, and plenty of tiny disasters combine for one amazing read. Seeing that so many of my friends loved this book, I went into it with pretty high expectations. And I think that may have played against me here, so take my review with a grain of salt.

I wish Nicholas were handsier—I mean handier,” I say, stealing the spotlight right back. “I’ve been performing maintenance duties by myself. But I’ve been getting better results, interestingly enough.” Nicholas’s stare is dehydrating. “Sounds unlikely.”
“Maintenance duties?” Deborah repeats, turning to him. “Has something broken? Naomi shouldn’t be trying to fix anything. She could make it worse.”
“I have no choice,” I tell her in a low, conspiratorial voice. “It’s a desperate situation…”

Admittedly, I struggled with the first 40% of the story. It dragged a little and I kept finding myself skimming. The characters felt a little blah and I just kept waiting for the moment they would jump off the pages for me. Luckily the second part of the book really brought that much needed zing. The banter here was amazing. The hilarious way Nicholas and Naomi tried to push each other into an out was entertaining as all get out. The fact that the story is written entirely in Naomi’s POV actually increased the enjoyment for me because I discovered the true depth of her fiance right as she did. There was something so magical about this. Granted I would have loved to be in Nicholas’s head a little bit, but that would have been icing on the cake.

This was a fun, light hearted romcom from an author that is now going straight to my auto buy list. If you’re looking for steam, this won’t have much of it, but the tiny bit that it had was a perfect fit. If you’re looking for a hilarious contemporary romance with plenty of banter and zing, this had it in spades.