on hold @ 37%
 
even though this is a contemporary romance, i found myself pretty excited to read it, as the premise is right up my alley: a grumpy boss/sunny PA romance where the boss is a creator of a famous m/m-coded tv show called Leeches and his assistant is a fanfic writer widely known in the Leeches' fandom. add to this mix a small age gap and you have a contemporary romance that's actually good... or maybe not. nothing about the development is clicking for me: not Lewis' manchild attitude, not the british setting, not the boring work travel. nothing besides the story-about-a-story premise. on top of that, the author throws a time jump in their relationship right away. it's a weird case of telling-not-showing. i keep thinking if this book were a fanfic of my favorite ship in bts i would like it better, bc only repeating how hot and brilliant a person is doesn't do much for me. and there's this mystery, about why Lewis is allergic to relationships and disrespectfully honest, that i bet once revealed won't manage to make me feel exactly sympathetic towards him. don't get me wrong, i love a damaged, internally vulnerable, emotionally constipated hero, but The Hating Game traumatized me and now i can't trust romance authors to do the bare minimum, which is: to give their characters plausible reasons to be the way they are.