Title: Enemies to Lovers
Author: Aster Glenn Gray
Publisher: Kalikoi
Length: 92 Pages
Category: Contemporary Romance
Rating: 4 Stars
At a Glance: Enemies to lovers is, perhaps, a slight exaggeration in the overall scheme of things. There is a sweetness and playfulness to the way Megan and Sarah’s relationship evolves, and it was a fun short read.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Handcuffed together. Only one bed. Which will win: Megan and Sarah’s sizzling sexual attraction, or their compulsion to correct each other’s atrocious fandom opinions?
Shy library science student by day, fanfic writer by night, Megan is thrilled when she discovers her new crush Sarah shares her favorite fandom. Smart, gorgeous, and brashly confident in her thoughts on fandom, Sarah is Megan’s dream girl… until Megan realizes that Sarah is also her Tumblr nemesis, who called Megan’s popular ongoing fic “the cancer that is killing fandom.” Clearly, they must never speak again.
But when a writing club exercise leaves them handcuffed together, they have no choice but to duke out their differences, until they reach an agreement on the most important question of all: is hatesex as insanely hot in real life as it is in fic?
Review: If you’ve ever been part of an online fandom, or even if you’ve never brushed up against one, Aster Glenn Gray’s Enemies to Lovers will either remind you of why you love those communities . . . or avoid them with vigor. That we can love the same things and still find something to fight about is just so human. That we can love something so much that we’ll plant a flag and die on that hill to defend it is so common, while hostile commentary can be had behind the anonymity of a computer screen and an alias. But those words might not feel quite so self-satisfying when they’re fed back to us face-to-face.
Megan and Sarah play in the same online sandbox, one building castles while the other critiques them. Following Toni Morrison’s advice about writing something she wants to read because it hasn’t been written yet, Megan tells her stories on AO3, which are not canon, and which Sarah finds irritating and trivial. To be more precise, Megan builds her sandcastles and Sarah tears them down on her Tumblr account. Thanks to screennames, they don’t realize who the other is when they go out for coffee and feel that frisson of attraction. But it doesn’t take long for Megan to parse that Sarah is her Tumblr nemesis.
Enemies to lovers is, perhaps, a slight exaggeration in the overall scheme of things. There is a sweetness and playfulness to the way Megan and Sarah’s relationship evolves that precludes feelings of deep antagonism and leans more into hurt feelings than an insurmountable grudge. Megan and Sarah in fact have fun with role playing as things heat up between them. Enemies to Lovers is about communicating while also finding a special someone to share a common love with. This was a fun short read.
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