This title was marketed incorrectly. This book isn't about romance. The male romantic lead is pretty one dimensional and hardly interacts with the female protagonist in the story. This book is about women's issues, particularly women in gaming. This book highlights racism, sexism/misogyny in the workplace. After you get over your disappointment that this isn't the romance you signed up for, you can take a step back and appreciate what this book is. The female protagonist is smart, capable, and stands up for herself. The author touches upon what being stalked and attacked online can do to a person's psyche. The writing is kinda clunky. There's a lot of telling and not a lot of showing through character and dialog. However, the book succeeds as a story of a woman's struggle in the workplace, if not as a romance.

Loathe at First Sight grabbed me initially by this cute animated cover. Based on that I was expecting a cute rom com type book but this one surprised me. Loathe at First Sight by Suzanne Park had a slight thread of a romantic relationship throughout the book, although that was far from the main story line.

Centered around a female, Melody Joo, working in a male dominated office and field, as a video game producer. When her insufferable CEO overhears Melody joking about a idea for a new video game, he pitches it to the board after he runs out of other options ... and they love it. Now he feels he has no choice but to make Melody the head producer. On top of Melody being new, Korean, and one of the only females in the office, she is now charge of this new video game and finding herself fighting lots of speculation from coworkers as to how she got the project.

This was the first novel I have read by Suzanne Pack. Despite the cover, I do not think romance or rom com is not the right genre for Loathe at First Sight. The novel is more about Melody overcoming several stereotypes in her workplace, than it was about her relationship with Nolan, the intern and CEOs nephew. Melody is constantly having to prove to others that she is just as capable as her coworkers, mainly white men. This did not cause me to like the novel less, it just forced me to change my expectations. I still found myself rooting for Melody in her gaming adventures and in life. I found myself smiling at her parents, and her crazy video game ideas. But most of all I found myself frustrated and angry by her boss, coworkers and HR departments knowing this behavior and mindset is rampant in some fields and companies today. It needs to change.

Thank you to Avon, Harper Collins Pub and Netgalley for an early eGalley of the book to read and provide an honest review.

Read this if you are looking for a book that deals with the gaming industry. Or a woman dealing being overlooked in a traditional male dominated industry. I started this looking for a light romance. I was disappointed in that regard. The first kiss did not happen until I was almost 90% done with the book. I did like the story overall but the plot was not what I anticipated.
I was given an advanced reader's copy via NetGalley and HarperCollins, thank you to them. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Firstly, I would not categorize this as a romance or romantic comedy. The "romance" is not the central plot and there was not much of the synopsis-suggested enemies-to-lovers workplace vibes--there was not much of a connection between Melody and Nolan to begin with. The primary story is about Melody Joo navigating racism, misogyny, sexism (all the terrible stuff!) at her job and life while working at a gaming development company. She faces nonstop harassment and honestly it was a lot; I found myself feeling anxious and apprehensive for the majority of the book. As another reviewer stated, this novel lacked the emotional insight necessary to really address many of the issues brought up in this novel. I never really had a good idea what each character felt, or why they did the things they did. All the men at her job were so horrid that they began to feel like caricatures, and to be honest I felt that I didn't really understand Melody all that well either. Additionally, Melody's parents and their reactions to her situation felt like they were used to make light of some of the very horrible things Melody faced which made me feel really uncomfortable. It's good that authors are tackling sexism, toxic workplaces for womxn, et cetera, but the execution and emotional insight for the subject was lacking here.

So first I will start with, I did not expect this to be an adult novel- maybe I just didn't pay enough attention to the description (oops). But despite this being an Adult novel (more specifically - New Adult), I really liked it. This book follows the traditional YA romance format but with more diverse and new circumstances.

Melody has just traded up to a new job from an Ad agency to being a junior producer in a video game design company. Melody experiences major anxiety, racism, and sexism in this role. She is put to task to create a new video game (that she technically came up with while making fun of traditional first person shooter games) in 6 months (a nearly impossible timeline) with very little resources. She is expected to fail- But failure is not an option for Melody. Especially, because it is expected to fail because SHE is in charge.

This novel shows the sexism and racism many women face in the video gaming community. Oh, AND there is a hunky guy who is her age who happens to be her intern. So add in the temptations of inter-office romance. This novel was a pleasant surprise and I really enjoyed reading it.

This is a book that I would definitely consider adding to my High School collection as an adult crossover book. The age of the characters could definitely be a benefit or a detriment when adding to a school library collection. Melody does use foul language, but not any worse than any YA book I have in the collection. By following the YA romance format, where we leave the main couple on a high end note without really seeing anything more than a date or two or some making out- I think that this would be an easy piece to integrate into a collection.

Loathe at First Sight​ by Suzanne Park comes out August 2020! http://kaitlynrcarpenter.weebly.com/blog/loathe-at-first-sight-by-suzanne-park-a-new-adult-romance-in-the-harsh-gaming-world

Given the current climate of *waves hands in all directions** Loathe at First Sight was jarring in both its depictions of ethnicity and workplace misogyny.

This may be an "it's not you, it's me situation." But either way, this one wasn't for me.

'Loathe at First Sight' shouldn't be considered a romance novel. It wasn’t. The storyline primary's focus was on Melody's career and the struggles she faced through the racist (subplot mostly), misogynistic and sexist work environment she was stationed at. The general romance aspect of this read was few and far between and with the minimal interactions Melody and the intern Nolan had, I was surprised that a romantic relationship was established between them by the end of the novel.

It was such a disappointment because I was anticipating an enemies turned lovers office romance but ended up getting humorless triggering read that left me irritated enough to not bother finishing this read. There were too many underlying issues with this novel making me realize that this just wasn’t my cup of tea.

This book was a super cute read. It helped me relax through the last week or so of self-isolation. I did just want a little bit more from it. Could have been a little longer.

I read six chapter and found this boring. I didn't really care about the main character and had no idea which of the many obnoxious men would be chosen as the one. Only good thing that I found was the setting of women in a toxic male environment.

They say that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference.

And, well...I didn't loathe this book, but oh, was I indifferent to it.

When I first read the plot summary for Loathe at First Sight, I was cautiously optimistic. There were so many thematic points to pull me in: Asian American? A capable underdog? Office romance? Enemies to lovers?? Yeah okay, I'm in.

I'll be frank: I think that the marketing choices for this book were misguided and highly misleading. Judging from the title, cover, and plot summary, I came into the book fully expecting a romantic comedy. That is not really what I got. The focal point of this book was Melody's trials and tribulations while developing her game. More specifically, the spotlight was on the sexism and racism she faces while working.

Now, the problem with spotlights is that they eclipse everything else on stage. So much focus in this book is placed upon the social grievances prevalent in the field of video games that nothing else really gets to have its time to make an impression. Yes, there is romance in the book, but it feels almost incidental due to lack of development. This was in large part due to another neglected component of the book: emotional insight.

There was a lack of attention paid to describing the emotions running through the characters. I rarely, if ever, felt as though I had any understanding of what each character was feeling - even on occasions where the emotion itself was named, not enough detail was provided to indicate the intensity or persistence of the feeling. As a result, character decisions often felt very abrupt. At one point, I literally threw my hands up in the air because I couldn't comprehend why in the world Melody was suddenly into Nolan.

Unfortunately, flow issues in this vein extended to other aspects of the book as well. Characters sometimes seemed to disappear and reappear randomly throughout scenes due to insufficient detailing of their whereabouts. It ends up giving off an impression sometimes that these characters only existed when it suited the plot, to be tossed aside the second they were no longer needed. They weren't being given treatment that conveyed personhood.

Almost all of the characters actually felt like caricatures of the role they were meant to serve in the story. While I wholeheartedly believe that the video game industry runs rampant with misogyny and racism, at some point, it became a little challenging to believe that every single man working at Melody's company was so blatantly sexist - not even that every man in the company was sexist, which is plausible, but that they were all so overtly sexist. That even the publicity director could be so unbelievably ignorant and insensitive. Really, every guy in this company (save for Nolan, of course, who is essentially the only unattached male character in the entire book who isn't sexist - pretty handy for weeding through the dating pool) is a misogynist? In Seattle? Really?

That isn't to say the female characterization fares much better. Even Melody herself, I wasn't a fan of. She's extremely brash and aggressive, getting into hotheaded arguments in public and acting antagonistically towards others without first gathering all of the facts. Oftentimes, her outbursts are also pretty childish (though to be fair, that behavior is not unique only to her). I mean, she plays mocking pranks on the CEO on more than one occasion, the first time being only a month into her job. And the CEO absolutely deserves it, but in what world does an employee think that's a good idea? Especially considering Melody's status as a new hire in an industry she has no prior experience in. There's assertive, and then there's looking for a fight. Like, I don't even understand why Melody loathed Nolan from the start - what exactly was it about him that she was finding so insulting or irritating in every one of their interactions? Apparently not much, because the moment they actually sit down and start to work together, she instead finds him very attractive.

Beyond that, Melody also plays into other Not Like Other Girl stereotypes that I tend to find grating. She's "unattractively" curvy, she's horrified at the prospect of heels, and she seems to treat anything "pretentious" with an air of disdain. Case in point: every single aspect of Jane's wedding. One curious thing I noticed is that this contempt often extended to standard Asian flavors (which, yes, have definitely been co-opted by white chefs in fine dining, but that's a whole other topic). One of the cakes Melody tastes and says apparently tastes like lotion is a yuzu flavor - that's essentially just a citrus cake, which sounds delicious to me. Even if one were to excuse Melody's distaste for the fact that yuzu is specifically Japanese, ingredients such as citron and tangerine are highly prevalent in Korean cuisine. It's not a far stretch for someone of Korean background to extend that familiar flavor profile to include yuzu.

It just doesn't appear to me that Melody's identity as a Korean American was as thoughtfully considered within the book as it should have been. Yes, she receives a lot of racist comments throughout the book (most of which centered on people's inability to differentiate between Japanese/Chinese/Korean - on the milder, more generic end on the spectrum of racist acts minorities face), but beyond Melody being a victim of racism, the story didn't touch too much on the racial aspect of her life other than with her parents.

I'm sad to say that the portrayal of Melody's parents was honestly disappointing to me. When I say that the characters felt like caricatures to me, I am thinking foremost about her parents. Every stereotype about Asian parenthood you can imagine, her parents exhibited - and in full force. I can't recall a single aspect about them that was a point of pride for Melody. Instead, what I saw through the parents was the Asian aspect of Melody's identity being played solely for laughs. Her parents were cutely humorous, they were peskily stubborn, they were constantly incredibly embarrassing, but never were they celebrated in any dignified manner. Melody's parents - her Asian roots - were just an inconvenience she had to deal with.

To put this into perspective, the most in-depth description in this book that the reader receives about Korean culture is not anything to do with Melody's parents but a couple of paragraphs detailing the sleaziness of Korean nightclubs. That short description is a perfect embodiment of the book and its aim: Loathe at First Sight is first and foremost a novel about feminism and sexism. Everything else in this book exists in service of that goal.

What upsets me the most is that there was a lot of potential for this book to work with. More than anything, I wanted to see what could have been done with regards to Melody's racial identity. At several points, there was a chance to dig into the co-opting of Asian culture in America for upper class white people. Throughout the wedding planning subplot, the choices of trendy, wealthy Jane constantly displayed Asian influences: the Korean wedding dress designer, the yuzu cake, the Korean influences on the nightclub chosen for the bachelorette. It was all right there for the taking. But none of this got even a single mention because of the book's single-minded agenda to highlight the sexism, to the detriment of everything else the book could have had going for it.

I want to make it clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a book that centers on grappling with sexism. If I had come into the book expecting that, I'm sure I would have enjoyed the read more. My problem lies in how the marketing for this book does not reflect that at all. Unlike what I expected from the blurb, there wasn't any insight into the character's Asian identity. I didn't get a sensible underdog I wanted to root for or a sizzling workplace attraction I could swoon over. I didn't even get the loathing I was promised, the display of chemistry between two enemies trading whip-smart barbs that will later translate to sparkling banter.

Without all of that, I'm just underwhelmed. I'm just...indifferent.

I'm not really into feminist books, but this one was pretty funny. I liked the message the book portrayed, Melody’s story sheds light on many issues faced by women (and especially women of color) in male-dominated jobs. I think I am not a huge fan of the writing style and thats also why this book was just okay for me.


Thanks for an ARC!

eBook provided for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

After jokingly pitching a "male-strippers save the world" video game with a female colleague, Melody Joo finds herself at the helm of producing the most highly anticipated video game of the year. With little experience and zero support from the company's misogynistic CEO, Melody is on her own to figure out how to pull off a major win for the company and her career. Enter Nolan McKenzie -- new intern and nephew to the CEO. Melody writes him off, despite his good looks, and tries to keep him away from the project sure that he is in his uncle's pocket. But when she is doxxed online by sexist gamers, Melody finds herself growing closer and closer to the man she tried to write off.

I've read a lot of contemporary romance this year (thanks COVID) and none of them have left me as on the fence as "Loathe at First Sight." First and foremost, this won't be for all readers. Park has chosen to accurately represent what it's like to work in a sexist environment. Melody deals with A LOT of misogyny, harassment, and bullying. A LOT. Cursing and sexism is on pretty much every page and the way Melody choses to respond won't sit well with some. But that's not really my issue with "Loathe at First Sight."

I think it's a great contemporary book about a woman of color succeeding even with all odds against her. But it's a meh romance. The plotlines between Melody and Nolan are 2nd at best to Melody's work. Sometimes even third once Melody's friends enter the story. I'm also not sold on the title as I never really got "loathing" vibes from Melody or Nolan.

So all in all, I liked "Loathe at First Sight" and I think many readers will too, but not as a romance.

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon Books for a gifted copy of this ARC.

This book highlights the struggles an Asian female faces in the gaming industry. As a fan of video games myself, I appreciate the insight into the process of developing a game. There are some good laugh out loud moments and Melody comes off as a strong female protagonist who does a decent job of advocating for herself. I think this one is more women's fiction than romance. There aren't many interactions between Nolan and Melody and it's a very slow burn. Instead, the focus of the book is on her toxic work environment.

Overall, it is a good read if you want to add some diversity to your reads!

I absolutely loved this book. It was more than just a rom-com type of book for me. It was a fantastic story about a female trying t make it in a male dominated area of gaming. It was smartly written and gave me hope for the future when women can be held as equals with men. I was surprised that this was considered a rom-com type of book because there wasn't that much romance in it. This was good because it focused more on Melody and how she had to fight for what she believed in with her game.

Written by a former comedian, this amusing book has zingers, needed levity for a book about a woman, Melody, struggling in the male-dominated video game industry. Melody’s workplace experiences are awkward and authentic, as are her battles to balance her over-demanding family and bridezilla friend. Although promoted as a romantic comedy, the chaste workplace romance takes a backseat to Melody’s self-growth into a confident game designer in the face of misogyny and sabotage. This is an Own Voices book.

This was a funny, feminist read with important messaging at its heart. It felt a bit more women’s fiction than romance, but Melody’s story sheds light on many issues faced by women (and especially women of color) in male-dominated fields. It’s a unique premise with a mix of lovable central characters to truly terrible antagonists, and was engaging from start to finish.

There are so many things to love about this book. It's full of feminist empowerment and characters that stand up for themselves and others who are minorities or oppressed. The gaming industry in general leaves a lot to be desired for women and Melody doesn't care. She's got goals to accomplish and a career path to set herself on.

My only problem was that from the title of the book this is being pitched as a romance. There's definitely romance in there but it's few and far between the main plot about Melody's job, the gaming industry, and her parents. The book even uses "loathe at first sight" to describe Melody when she meets another character who is not the main love interest. I liked Melody and her story is compelling and ultimately a better story of empowerment than a romance.

I liked Nolan overall, but we never got to know them or see them together. I feel like we saw more of Melody with her friends and their significant others than Nolan and I spent the first half of the book thinking it was an undergrad 19 year old intern instead of the 28 year old MBA intern he was. There was a lot of random details about his life and family that seemed sprinkled throughout rather than part of his character.

* I was given an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A very slow burn romance but satisfying. A compelling storyline about the rampant misogyny in the gaming industry makes this book a real stand out.

This is an awesome, fun, yet meaningful read with a snarky, feisty, sarcastic, go-getter heroine, doing her best to thrive despite misogyny and racism in the world of video game production.

Melody is a super like-able protagonist, and although she’d dealing with a lot in terms of working in a testosterone central – a gaming company-- she doesn’t take herself too seriously, even if throughout the book she will face some true verbal abuse and trolling, verging on stalking.

The publisher’s positioning of this as a pure enemies to friends romcom underplays some of the more weighty themes. Yes, there is a romance storyline, and although it’s a fun read, this book isn’t in any way lightweight or only about a woman being ‘saved’ or fighting her attraction to a guy. Quite the opposite, Melody is going to save herself from this trolling predicament – she just knows she needs some help to do it.

The concept of the video game with male strippers fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic world had me laughing out loud at several points, and Melody’s internal monologue (that sometimes slips external – no filter!) and her relationship with her parents had me giggling more than once.

You can tell quite how much research Suzanne Park put into getting the gaming elements, environment just right and the writing is flawless. Smooth, and I was not once taken out of the story by word choice or author voice intervening in my reading experience.

A fun read with enjoyable snappy, snarky characters and dialogue. Totally worth your time!

Melody Joo has wanted to be a video game producer for years and now's her chance. When she's overheard jokingly pitching a game concept to a colleague things take off quickly. Unfortunately for Melody, she spends more time defending herself and dealing with annoying co-workers, the intern included, than she was prepared for.

This was so much more than a rom-com, yes it's funny (Melody's parents had me cackling) and has a love interest, but it goes so much deeper. The level of hate Melody deals with was absolutely heartbreaking, and honestly made some parts of the book difficult to read. BUT, I think it's so important to continue bringing up racism and gender equality until we have it, and even after so we never forget. Melody is such a strong amazing character with integrity, even when she had the chance to expose the trolls she chose not to. The storyline with Nolan was such a slow burn, and he's adorable, it's hard to have a whole lot to say about him since the pov is 1st person told from Melody's perspective. Overall this is a good read, that's much more than the blurb lets on.