On the Corner of Love and Hate by Nina Bocci

Narrated by Dara Rosenberg

1st in the Hopeless Romantics Series of Standalones

I have worked with Nina Bocci in the book world for many years now, so I was excited for her to release her first solo novel. I started reading my ARC of On the Corner of Love and Hate and honestly just couldn’t get into it, but that seems to be the case a lot for me lately, so I waited for the audiobook which definitely held my interest more than reading it.

Emma and Cooper grew up in the small town of Hope Lake. Politics are in their blood. Her dad is the mayor, and his mom is in politics too. Cooper and Emma both work in the city planning department, but Cooper is running for Mayor because Emma’s dad is retiring. The relationship between Emma and Cooper has been strained for a while.

“If you two got your heads out of your collective asses, you would make the perfect pair.”

Emma is doing all of Cooper’s work while he is out campaigning, and the little mouse just bitches to herself instead of slapping this jerk right upside the head. He is the town playboy, so much so that his bedroom escapades are all the town talks about instead of taking him seriously for Mayor.

“In a lot of ways, Cooper was like the sun: you couldn’t fly close to it, or him, without getting burned.”

Honestly, he did seem completely immature and unqualified. He seemed like he had no substance, and I never really fully warmed up to him or rooted for him. While I liked Emma at first, I felt like she let herself be taken advantage of by this guy, and never saw the reasoning behind her feelings.

On the Corner of Love and Hate reminded me very much of another co-worker hate-to-love book that will soon be a movie, but it had so much less romance and I never really fell for the main characters. That being said, I never felt like I wanted to put it down but I also never felt the need to go and share my love for it on socials.

Likes:

I liked the town and it’s quirky residents.
All of the side characters.
I love an enemies to lovers read.
The friendships.
The small town was charming and really written well.
Good parents and family life.
Her inner monologues.
Some cute moments that made me snicker.
I love the covers of the whole series.

Dislikes:

Moved too slow for me.
Only her POV, this story really needed his as well.
Neither character was likable enough for me to root for, and it seemed that they felt the same about each other.
The political race was stupidly cutthroat for this little town and overshadowed the romance.
No chemistry.

The Narration:

I hope to see Dara Rosenberg do more contemporary romance because I really enjoyed her narration.

The Down & Dirty:

On the Corner of Love and Hate by Nina Bocci had good bones and some great moments, but as a whole it was just an OK read for me. It almost shouldn’t be classified as romance. I never felt the chemistry; I never felt the push and pull. I never felt any reason she would even like him. But it kept my interest which is more than a lot of books have done lately.