They Hate Each Other follows Jonah and Dylan who get along like oil and water. While Jonah thinks Dylan is an arrogant, spoiled golden boy, Dylan knows Jonah is an attention-seeking asshat who never shuts up. Despite them not being able to share the same air for longer than a second before they start to bicker, their friends are under the impression that Jonah and Dylan are a match made in heaven. So when a disastrous end to a party turns into people hearing the rumour that Jonah and Dylan are now together, the boys come up with a plan: pretend that they’re dating to appease their friends only to then break up and make them feel horribly guilty for pushing them together in the first place, which means Jonah and Dylan will finally be rid of all their nagging to just “try” to like each other. Sounds easy, right? But the more time they spend together to keep up the fake dating narrative, and the more they practice handholding and…kisses for the sake of making it look real in front of their friends, the more they see what lies beneath all the assumptions they made about each other until their scheme might just turn into more.
Falling for your enemy has never been this entertaining. Honestly, everything from the amazing protagonists Jonah and Dylan to the compulsively readable writing had me cheering.
Speaking of Jonah and Dylan, they have such distinct personalities and life journeys that kept me flipping the pages but when they were together on the page? Sparks flew, every single time. They had the kind of chemistry you can’t really put into words because it just felt so natural. Their banter was just so engaging and their respective humour meshed so well together. I loved that we got to see them be actual enemies-in-cahoots for a hot second there and then saw their dislike for each other slowly unravel. It’s so magical seeing Jonah and Dylan slowly open up to each other and no longer seeing the other as the enemy but instead as someone who could really care for them and become a safety net. The climax of the story made me shed more than a tear because you could tell that they cared so deeply for each other but that sometimes that means ostensibly hurting your relationship to make sure that the other party gets what they need to survive and thrive on their own.
Lest you think this is just a romance, nuh-uh. The romance and comedy parts are expertly balanced with more sobering topics such as trauma, poverty, loneliness, and anxiety. Both Jonah and Dylan deal with quite a lot of challenges and issues at home. Their relationships with their respective siblings is so important to the plot and who they are as young men and I absolutely adored it. While Dylan’s history is more of a mystery and is slowly unravelled, we get to see Jonah as the caretaker for his younger siblings and the strain this puts on him. Yet despite that, he never fails to make them smile and care for them in whichever way he can. Dylan, meanwhile, is shown to have a whole different side to him through his introspection and painfully relatable anxiety.
Honestly, this book was a complete home-run for me. Woody manages to take amazing tropes and make them even better, all on top of offering fully fleshed-out characters that will steal your heart from the very first page. I can’t wait to see what this new voice comes up with in the future.
Taking on beloved tropes such as fake dating, enemies-to-lovers and grumpy/sunshine and making them shine in new glory, Woody’s They Hate Each Other is an irresistible, delightfully funny, and emotionally heartwrenching debut that’s not to be missed!
They Hate Each Other is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of May 9th.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Jonah and Dylan get along like oil and water. Until a fake dating ploy gives them new perspective, and they realize that “falling for your enemy” isn’t as impossible as it seems.
There are plenty of words Jonah Collins could use to describe Dylan Ramírez. “Arrogant,” “spoiled,” and “golden boy” to name a few. Likewise, Dylan thinks he has Jonah accurately labeled as an attention-seeking asshat who never shuts his filthy mouth. Their friends are convinced Jonah’s and Dylan’s disdain for one another is just thinly veiled lust—a rumor that surges like wildfire when the two wake up in one bed after homecoming. Mutually horrified, Dylan and Jonah agree to use the faux pas to their advantage by fake dating. If they can stay convincing long enough to end their “relationship” in a massive staged fight, they can prove their incompatibility to their friends once and for all. But the more time they spend together, the more their plan begins to fall apart—and the closer they come to seeing each other clearly for the first time.
