I enjoy the finer things in life and literature: slow-burn romance, hate-to-love romance, a healthy dose of angst. Thankfully, On the Corner of Love and Hate delivered everything I wanted in this fun, witty, charmingly romantic story.

I don’t often comment on book covers in my reviews, but I really think this book is going to fly under the radar undeservingly. I don’t hate the cover and I don’t think it’s terrible, but I really think having a cover that was brighter and more fun would attract the eyes of more readers (think along the lines of Christina Lauren’s The Unhoneymooners or Tessa Bailey’s Fix Her Up).

The crux of this story is a frenemies-to-lovers romance, so obviously I was all onboard. Emma and Cooper have a rocky relationship: they were childhood best friends who had a bit of a falling out later in life, and now work together in the same department. The two of them seem to be constantly bickering and arguing, but it’s still obvious that they care about each other.

I don’t think there was a single thing I didn’t love about this book. I adored the characters, the writing was fantastic, and the plot was super compelling. When a book gives me, the reader, a series case of butterflies during the first kiss scene, that’s when you know it’s done a tremendous job building the tension!

On the Corner of Love and Hate is the perfect summer read. It has a great blend of humor, politics, anst, and romance. I’m so thankful the publicist reached out to me about this title because I absolutely adored it. Nina Bocci has another book coming out this fall and I will definitely be keeping my eye out for it!

I'm stretching a little to give this book 4 stars. It's well written. The characters are interesting. Somehow though it failed to wow me. In part, I never felt the hate between these two. Emmanuelle and Cooper snipe at each other quite a bit but the heat isn't there. You know that delicious love-hate that creates a sexual heat the reader can almost feel.

The story is full enough to keep the reader turning pages and the result satisfying though so the book is worth reading for sure. I really did want to see these two work out their issues and find their happily ever after.

Thank you NetGalley for my Arc. I found this book to be a bit of a slow read. The story focused on friends turning to lovers. The main character, Emma, I did not care for. She seemed very rude and bossy most of the book.

Really enjoyed this cute friends to romance book. It is somewhat of a slower read, but still completely enjoyable and a very cute book with a very enjoyable writing style.

Thank you to NetGalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

I love a good friends to lovers romance. This a great slow-burn story about two childhood friends who finally find themselves where they were meant to be.
This story is filled with humor, angst, and swoon worthy moments. I loved it! I am looking forward to reading the second book in this series.

Overall, I would say I enjoyed this book and would give it 3.5 stars. I enjoyed the author's style of writing, the premise of the story, the background of the characters, and most of the characters within the story.

My mixed feelings come when I try to understand why Cooper is still friends with Emma. I realize that after being friends since early childhood, she got hurt and they drifted apart, but her harshness and disrespect toward him was sometimes so extreme I wanted him to fight back and not take it from her. He may not have been a perfect person, but he seemed much kinder than Emma and I wanted to see that leveled out a bit. She definitely needed to be a strong character that stood up for herself to be in the position she was in, but to be that cruel to someone who has been a friend and who you may have feelings for became a bit frustrating.

The sexual tension between Cooper and Emma was well-written. The secondary characters added a great deal to this book - especially Henry, Nick, and Sophia. The small town feel made the characters come to life because everyone knew them and had opinions about them.

Probably one of my favorite parts of the book was the epilogue. The way it wrapped up was a wonderful wrap-around from where they had come from to where they were headed. Perfect!

I did enjoy this story, and I hope to read about Nick and Henry finding their true loves in books to come!

If you enjoy a slow burn, friends-to-enemies-to-lovers book with a heavy dose of local politics then this is the story for you. The first 2/3 of the book drags out the politics and enemies portion of the story. The final 1/3 deals with the original friendship of the two main characters of Emma and Cooper and then moves that forward into the love affair portion. The plot moves slowly, the romance moves slower. While on the one hand, the character building the author does is well-written, there’s a bit too much angst for me throughout the first 2/3.

Ultimately, for the first 2/3 Emma and Cooper were annoying characters on and off, with hearts of gold underneath. If nothing else, one is very clear that they both LOVE Hope Lake and have put all (or most…) of their energies into supporting the town in a variety of ways. Both characters prove themselves to be good people and hard workers – their personalities are very relatable. For all the sturm-und-drang of the first 2/3, the readers are rewarded with a solid love story at the end.

I loved the small town political backdrop of this fun, flirty battle of wits between two former best friends. Emma is exactly the sort of heroine I could see myself being best friends with.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a little slow in the beginning to be honest, but a little less than halfway through I really started to enjoy it. It was a fun look into small town politics.

I was up till 4 am reading this. I started at 8 pm. I loved everything about this. EVERYTHING.

On the Corner of Love and Hate is a sexy political love feast!

One of my favorite kind of reads. Funny, wrapped in longing, sprinkled with tinges of jealousy, and basted in so much sexual tension I wanted to combust! Oh, Nina Bocci... you have become a one-click go-to author. I don't care if it's your to-do list, I'm gonna read it.

5 FABULOUS STARS!!
~Tanja

I'm sorry I didn't love this book. The characters were a bit too unlikeable. Cooper was a bit too flawed with horrible decision making and Emma too dishonest and wishy-washy. The 'Mayor Dad" name... used repeatably, was just weird.

I can’t finish this. It’s so dull. Emma’s snark is supposed to be cute and it’s not. She’s not nice. There isn’t any banter - just Emma bitching at Cooper and telling him how terrible he is.

Much like the heroine, Emma, my feelings about this book are all over the place.

Billed as an enemies to lovers romance, readers find out in the first few chapters that Emma and the hero, Cooper, are enemies but actually best friends but she has deep feels but he annoys her with his playboy ways. So....which was it? Well, you don't actually find out until 80% of the book.

For his part, Cooper seems sort of meh on Emma all the way up until the end. He respects her, of course, but there was nothing that was really shown that has a reader pulling for the couple.

What readers know for a fact that Emma DOES love? She loves her small town, Hope Lake. She loves it on a Lesley Knope level. How do readers know that? Many many many pages of it. It might work on Parks & Rec but it just made my eyes gloss over - and I generally like small town stories.

It's really a shame because I really enjoyed the author's voice and could see so much potential in the story. Emma and Cooper were one note characters. We didn't know anything much about them other than Emma LOVES Hope Lake!!! The side characters, like her other supposed best friends, Nick and Henry were begging to be fleshed out a bit more to not only reflect Emma and Cooper but build a foundations for their own stories.

I would try another one of this author's books. This one just left me hanging.

*ARC courtesy of NetGalley

This book was ok. I prefer to read romance novels where the two characters that get together share a lot of time in the book. There would be several chapters between the characters have any interactions. Plus, I felt sorry for the town of Hope Lake that they had to choose between these two disasters of a campaign.

This is a SLOW burn romance...and I MEAN SLOW. I really just didn't care what happened I just wanted it be over. It's a 300 page book that read like a 500 page book. I was so bored, I picked it up multiple times and started to read and then gave up. I finally forced myself to finish it . I think people will enjoy this but I was just really uninterested in any of it. Cooper was self absorbed. I hated "Emmas thoughts" being written separately. Too many details and none of them good.

3.5 – 4 Stars!

What is it about small town romances? I would hate to live in a small town where everybody knows my business, but I sure do love reading about them.

While I thought this was an enemies to lovers kind of book, I never felt like Emma and Cooper were enemies. Perhaps just friends who grew apart a little. The only thing they seem to have in common is the love for their town.

While I didn’t necessarily feel a strong connection between Emma and Cooper, I still found it to be an enjoyable read and will continue the series with their friends.

ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

"On the Corner of Love and Hate" by Nina Bocci
I received an ARC of this story from the publisher and this is, of course, is my review. I liked the story... even when I got so frustrated with the characters that I wanted someone to shake them seven ways from Sunday. Or, maybe I just wished they had a Dutch Uncle that would set them straight.. But then if they weren't bumbling their way through their story... it would have possibly been a short story. And, I guess we all have our times when we make our lives so much more difficult that they have need to be. Not being open about how we feel about things... like when we are hurt by someone's words or actions... well it can have a negative impact on our relationships. I hope you will enjoy your time in Hope Lake, PA.. sounds like a great place to live or at least visit !! Happy Reading !!

Enemies to Lovers? Yep! Small Town Romance? Yep! Good supporting characters for future books? Yep! Slow burn? Yep! All of these are the makings of a great story... unfortunately I didn’t care for this book as much as I thought I would. First I never truly understood why Emma hated Cooper? It wasn’t clearly spelt out and then enemies to lovers was stretched at best. They never felt like enemies they always just felt like Emma was annoyed by him.
Copper although he grew on me, was a man child who seriously needed to grow up. I didn’t care if they ended up together and there wasn’t enough romance or screen time of the couple together. Overall I think this is a great outline of a story but needs a lot more character driven storyline to fully develop the book.

** ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review **

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley for my honest review.
I read the blurb for this book and thought I would love it as the author’s work was compared to the likes of Christina Lauren. Boy was I wrong. Emmanuelle (Emma) Peroni works In Hope Lake government with her former BFF Cooper Endicott. When we first meet Emma, she seems like a harried modern 28 year old who is type A and has to cover for womanizing Mayoral candidate Cooper. My first impression of Cooper was that he was a self-centered jerk who blew off work and expected Emma to pick up the slack. But as the book went on I realized that I may have misidentified who the jerk was, Emma became increasingly whiny, a bit of a martyr and unreasonable. While I decreasingly disliked Emma, I felt more empathy for Cooper. While he made some dumb mistakes when he was younger, Emma vilified him when he couldn’t read her mind that she was infatuated with him. I just wish that the author hadn’t made her such a neurotic nut job, as the other characters in this book were interesting. This book had a lot of potential, but sadly fell short.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book. There were many aspects of this book I enjoyed. Unfortunately, those did not really appear until the last 25% of the book and the first 3/4's felt like a very slow build to the end when the 2 main characters finally admit their feelings for each other. I wish that they had this realization a bit earlier on in the book so that we could see their relationship grow and progress. It was obvious there were feelings on both ends, but by the time they were admitted, it all felt very rushed. We went from hate to love very fast. I really liked Cooper but the main female character, Emma was eh for me. She seemed angry and ready to think the worst of Cooper at every turn. All in all, a good read. I am glad I was given the chance to read it and I think may people will enjoy it.