This one was so disappointing. While I normally love a good enemiesto-lovers trope via the fake dating trope, I recoiled at the "pretending to be gay for votes to win over liberals and gain political pwoer" part. I just couldn't finish this. (It didn't help that both Clay and Thom are boring stereotypes.)

Thank you for the opportunity to review, this one just isn't for me. I’m absolutely on board with fake romances and enemies to lovers. However I am not on board with Thom pretending to be gay (and presumably being gay or bi at the end).

Love, Hate & Clickbait by Liz Bowery is an enemies to lovers fake romance with opposites who attract in the world of politics who find themselves needing to help the governor in ways they never expected. Thom is a determined man who knows how to work situations into the best possible outcomes. Clay is also part of the team he is working with but gets on his very last nerve. When they are accidently seen together and their situation misinterpreted, they find themselves fake dating and hating every moment of it. Thom was not a good person, but what happens when lines begin to blur?

3.5-stars. Happy reading!

“𝑩𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒏𝒆𝒘 𝒔𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆. 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝒊𝒕 𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒐 𝒔𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒏 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏 𝒉𝒆’𝒅 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒃𝒆𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆.”

This book was such a pleasant surprise! I took a chance on reading it, and I am so happy I did.

Them and Clay couldn’t be more different and they make for an unlikely pair. Thom is an asshole from the very beginning (breaking up with his girlfriend at her sister’s wedding for work) and Clay is bumbling, while also being full of himself. Neither character is very likeable at first. Once Lennie, their boss and future presidential nominee, suggests the two of them having a fake romance, you wonder how it’ll ever work, and it doesn’t (at first), which I loved. Neither character quickly fell for the other and I loved seeing the natural development of their relationship. Politics serve as the background here, much like another one of my favourite reads this year Ashley Winstead’s Fool Me Once, and Bowery did a great job showing how cutthroat and ruthless it all can be. I really felt for Clay, especially when people misjudged him and his self-confidence took a hit with his former company, and I loved the small ways Thom tried to show up for him (in his own, sometimes selfish, ways). I also loved how Thom’s bisexuality wasn’t treated with some identity crisis - it was so refreshing. The steam and the storyline, along with Bowery’s witty and sarcastic lines, kept the plot moving. My only complaint was the ending that could’ve been a little longer - a few threads, like Clay’s parents, were mentioned and then dropped.

Love, Hate & Clickbait is a refreshing tale in the romance genre that features hungry, cutthroat characters backed with stolen moments as Thom and Clay get to know one another. Their story could expand into a sequel. I recommend giving this a read! Thank you to Mira Books and NetGalley for the ARC!

“Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much” as he’s tripping over that infinitely (and infamously) fine line between love and hate. Pardon me for mangling Shakespeare and mixing metaphors in the same sentence, but if the shoe fits – or in this case both shoes fit – I’m wearing them.

All three of the titular events happen in this enemies-to-lovers in a fake relationship romance. As the story begins, campaign operative Thom Morgan and pro-level geek Clay Parker are office enemies working on California governor Lennie Westwood’s pre-campaign campaign to become the next president of these United States.

Thom and Clay are office rivals because they are completely opposites. Not that either of them start out exactly likable, but they’re on totally different ends of pretty much any workplace spectrum, and they rub each other the wrong way pretty much just by breathing in each other’s vicinity.

Clay pretty much lets his geek flag fly all the time. He’s a refugee from Silicon Valley and is used to that kind of workstyle – meaning one that may be “working” 24/7 but sometimes that work looks like play and everyone is out to be the biggest nerd.. But he’s also the child of a family that loves him unconditionally and celebrated ALL of his accomplishments ALL the time. So he toots his own horn a lot. Too much. To the point of cringing absurdity – at least as far as Thom is concerned.

Thom, on the other hand, is a shark. Every relationship is calculated for the maximum benefit to him. He’s always dressed to the nines in a style appropriate to the event. He’s all about making his candidate look good so that he can make himself look good. But he’s from a family that treated him like a cuckoo in their cozy suburban nest. It’s not that anyone hated him, it’s that no one truly saw him or was there for him because he was just so different. He’s a version of Michael J. Fox’s character in Family Ties, but one that was neither supported nor even accepted by his family. He’s used to taking on protective coloration, not to blend in but just to get by.

The campaign that Thom and Clay are working on is in trouble, seemingly constantly, by huge gaffes committed by both the governor/candidate and her dysfunctional family. When Lennie is recorded making an off-the-cuff remark that the reason her hair isn’t properly styled is because there are no gays on her campaign staff, the liberal voters that her campaign is courting are up in arms.

The campaign’s answer is to have Thom and Clay pose as a gay couple working for the campaign. A candid video of them has been posted having an ugly argument that looks like it’s about to morph into throwing each other on the ground for sex instead of the kicking and punching that nearly happened for real. Twitter and Insta are both loving the picture, to the point where OMG fanfic is starting up.

With their jobs on the line, the enemies reluctantly agree to not just a temporary truce, but a fake relationship for the inevitable cameras. From both their perspectives, the whole thing is so implausible they can’t imagine it will work.

But it has to. And surprisingly, it does – at least as far as social media is concerned. Whether it can possibly save the campaign is an entirely other matter…

Escape Rating C+: This is a story that threatens to go completely off the rails at multiple points. It never quite does, but it toes that line awfully, awfully hard in multiple ways and multiple directions.

As unlikable as both Thom and Clay are in the beginning, once I got into the story it became clear that Clay’s behavior was a result of not knowing the work culture and feeling out of his depth and a bit insecure. Once he got a bit more settled the things that made him annoying smoothed out quite a bit. So I ended up feeling FOR him considerably more than I did Thom – not that in the beginning Thom seems to have any feelings whatsoever.

OTOH, Thom is both cold-blooded and narcissistic from jump, and it takes a long time for him to change and for the reader to see what is really motivating his shark-like behavior. While it was easy to see that Clay, for all his faults, was the kind of person who could give themselves in a relationship. With Thom I had to wonder if he was capable of having a real relationship of any kind with anyone but himself. He starts out with no real friends, no family (either birth or found) and no real romantic interests.

That the campaign required them to fake a romantic relationship, and that they agreed to do so, may be the trope that powers the story, but it crossed so far over so many lines that it was hard to take even though agreeing to the pretense felt very much in Thom’s wheelhouse if not Clay’s. Even though Thom is the one that has ALL the objections, mostly because he isn’t shy about pointing out that he’s “lowering his standards” to date someone like Clay.

I could see Clay falling for Thom if he was willing to let his heart sliced into bloody chunks, but that happens. People fall in love with all sorts of people who they either know or refuse to admit are either bad for them or just plain terrible.

What was harder to believe was the way that Thom slowly – very slowly – let some of his walls down. Even if he couldn’t admit to himself he was doing it. Thom’s in denial until the very end, and even then he’s more than a bit of a douche about it. Which fits his personality to a T. Even as much as Thom is dragged, kicking and screaming, into being a real human being, his redemption was a bit too pat.

But the hardest part of this story is the political shark tank they operate in. We all know that politics is a dirty business and is the epitome of the old joke about not wanting to see how the sausage is made. In fiction, especially in a romance, I think we want to see a few less of the warts that surround the process. Or more consequences for those warts. Or we want our heroes to be heroes and our villains to be villains and that’s not what happens here. Or, perhaps, all of the above.

Lennie Westwood is a piece of work, for all the negative connotations of that phrase. Thom’s colleague Felicia seems to still think that politics can do some good for people, but she’s generally a realist and a pragmatist. That Felicia sees the excesses of Westwood’s behavior and STILL thinks that getting the woman elected POTUS is her best chance at making a positive difference in people’s lives feels disingenuous at best and self-sabotage at worst. Or Felicia is playing everyone for a fool, including, quite possibly, herself.

To make a rather long story short, I ended up with extremely mixed feelings about Love, Hate & Clickbait. As much as I love both enemies-to-lovers and fake relationship romances, this one didn’t quite gel for me. As always, your reading mileage may vary.

I enjoyed parts of it but mostly it wasn't much fun. Especially Thom annoyed me quite a lot.

<i>*ARC provided by the publisher via netgalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review

This was an enjoyable read! It’s a nice enemies-to-lovers story that avoids some typical pitfalls of the genre and brings a nice story with some wonderfully biting language and a semi-plausible story. I appreciated that the main characters was not a “straight guy who becomes gay when stuck” but rather a guy whose sexuality has always been “meh… whatever”. It was a refreshing step for the genre.

3.5 stars

For fans of Boyfriend Material and Red, White & Royal Blue – this book felt very much in the same vein as those two books. The two protagonists are both hard to like in their own ways, surrounded by a political environment setting which make for a cast of characters which are all pretty cutthroat and out for political gain.

Admittedly, while I was really pulled in by the premise, I was a bit unsure how this would play out once I started reading the beginning. That’s because it’s made very clear in the first chapter that Thom dates women, so then knowing that and now reading the premise again, I was nervous about how this would be handled with him pretending to now be gay. I obviously can’t speak for how others feel on this, but personally – while there was one comment made about it – it wasn’t really ever mentioned again and, yes, that could be good that his sexuality isn’t made into a big deal, but also feels odd that nobody makes any comment about this sudden change given the pace of the fake relationship.

That being said though, the fake relationship/enemies-to-lovers trope worked for this story. There’s a lot of tension and fighting the inevitable, with some really sweet (begrudgingly, from Thom’s POV) endearing moments as well as some steamy ones too. I kept waiting for a certain shoe to drop to be the “thing” that derails the couple (to allow for them to find each other again – like all good romance novel story cadences) but it didn’t end up playing out that way which I’m surprised about but also not mad about either. While I wish there may have been a tad more growth in the characters, the coldness of Thom makes for some sweet moments – in his own way.

Overall it was an entertaining read, and great for readers who are looking for an LGBTQ contemporary romance. Bonus if you’re also a political junkie and love that type of setting for a story!

This was absolutely adorable. I wasn’t sure I was going to like 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦, 𝘏𝘢𝘵𝘦 & 𝘊𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘣𝘢𝘪𝘵 by Liz Bowery when I first started—I really was not so sure about both Thom and Clay; they were kind of jerks, haha—but I kept going, and soon I couldn’t put it down, and then I finished it in a day. The MC’s were flawed but ultimately endearing characters and I loved slowly peeling back their layers and getting to know them underneath both their bravados, and watching the same happen between them. The fake dating trope isn’t always my favorite, but it really worked here and the slow-burn hate to love, the angst, the sweetness, all the political scheming from what felt like every angle…I really enjoyed all of it. Totally recommend!

𝙄 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙣 𝙚𝘼𝙍𝘾 𝙘𝙤𝙥𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙗𝙮 𝙃𝙏𝙋 𝘽𝙤𝙤𝙠𝙨 (𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙠-𝙮𝙤𝙪!). 𝘼𝙡𝙡 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙫𝙤𝙡𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙢𝙮 𝙤𝙬𝙣.

Wanted to love this book, but I just couldn't get on board with just how unlikable Thom was. Life is too short for books we aren't feeling, so sadly it's a DNF for me. As a fan of the West Wing I'm super sad because give me some Josh/Sam fanfiction but it just wasn't for me. I'm sure it will work for others!

I thoroughly enjoyed this hate to love, fake dating rom com about two campaign staffers. Clay and Thom being forced into fake dating by the campaign they work on to distract from their candidates general crappiness (and casual homophobia) was a funny set up for what turned out to be a sweet romance between nerdy Clay and campaign shark, Thom.

Fake dating and enemies to lovers are two of my favorite romance tropes, especially in romantic comedy. People who are "enemies" can generate some sparks as they fight the chemistry between them, and fake dating between enemies is even more fun. This one certainly has its moments. That said, I'll admit it took me some time to warm up to Thom and Clay. But then, I can't say I was crazy about much of anyone in this story. Thankfully, I don't have to love every character, and I feel like many of these weren't really supposed to be particularly likable. Some of that made for some snarky and amusing moments. Thom and Clay do have some heat between them, and there are some redeeming qualities - more so for Clay than Thom, but he does start to show some promise late in the game. The story is fast-paced and entertaining, and I had a good time waiting to see who would get their comeuppance. All in all, Liz Bowery's debut was worth the read, and I'll be interested to see what she does next.

This book made me lose all hope in politics. OMG these characters are wretched, horrible people. They do not deserve love. They have no redeeming qualities--not one! And for the readers comparing this to The West Wing--please! You do a disservice to the noble characters of that show.

I enjoyed this political, fake-dating, enemies-to-lovers romance! What I loved lost is the non-event that is the main character’s bisexual awakening. He’s completely unbothered and doesn’t have a crisis, and I related so much to it. This book was so much fun!

I loved this book! Clay is an absolute doll and Thom has just the kind of angsty, internal growth I love to see in my romance books! Read in one sitting and loved every minute.

Thank you to NG for a copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This is a marmite book, you love or you hate it. I was more on the hate side even if I had fun and enjoyed some parts of the book.
I wasn't a fan of the characters that I found a bit too obnoxious. I found the part about the political campaign interesting.
I'm sure a lot of people will like it.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book, my thoughts are my own.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this.

Now, this was not what I had anticipated, let me explain myself. I love politics and fake dating. I don't hate unlikable characters either, but they have to have something about them that I love. This did not have this, they both got on my nerves and the politics took too much place for a romance novel in my opinion, I wanted more out of them, to really believe they could like, even love each other and for it to be realistic enough.

One of our MC is simply or was simply rather horrible with the women in his life, there is no redemption ARC that makes it okay, not that it would be okay, but one for us to have some sort of empathy towards him.

The pacing feels off the whole time, like some scenes were missing, but also not missing, it's that weird in between. It felt like it lacked editing overall and continuity, while set in modern day why do they have to have a "fake wedding", nobody is losing their titles or inheritance contrary to a regency romance, no one's reputation is in danger from them being exiled from society, cause it isn't the 1900 or 1800's....

NO ONE in this book is likable, and I want to point that out because if you will pick this up don't expect to have a sweet side character that is bff's with a mean snarky MC, there is none of that. There is a lack of enjoyable moments or scene in this book, it feels like a Fanfic, not a great one at that of previous books that has none of the charm of those original works.

Unfortunately this book left me annoyed and feeling like I wasted my time, I kept waiting for it to become good and what I had expected it to be when I read the blurb and was so excited about it.

1/5 stars
cannot recommend this, if you enjoyed it I'm happy for you, I will personally put it in a corner of my mind and forget about it.
Bookarina

Fake dating is my jam. I'm unapologetic about that. So when I was sifting through my Kindle library, I decided I wanted some fake dating to make me happy. And oh boy did I get what I wanted! I finished this book in a single day, where I also worked a full 8-hour shift, so you know I was sucked in.

Thom is a political consultant for California's governor who's on the cusp of announcing a run for president. Clay was hired to the governor's team after a public falling out with his Silicon Valley partner. He's everything Thom is not: goofy, awkward, unpolished, emotional. After the governor makes a political gaffe that comes across as homophobic, the team decides to capitalize on a photo of Thom and Clay that makes it look like they're much more than office enemies. The pair's fake romance becomes an internet darling, and Thom and Clay are forced to play the part of lovebirds again and again as the governor keeps messing up.

Along the way, Thom and Clay discover a very real attraction and even some tender emotions. Thom finds himself spending a lot of time unwinding at Clay's homey little apartment, and Clay discovers how good it feels to have Thom in his corner when his sleezy ex-friend tries to steal a new coding idea from him.

Clay starts off as the sort of obnoxious, attention-hungry Silicon Valley tech-bro that it's hard to like, but as the book goes on, you really begin to like him. His bluster is about covering up his deep insecurities about not being included or respected. I found myself wanting to give him a hug and make Thom be his bulldog all the time. Thom's cutthroat drive to succeed softens a bit as he's faced with the continual mistakes of the governor, who may not be the horse to back in the political race after all. Clay doesn't ask for much, but he gives a lot of vulnerability to Thom, who really has no choice but to soften up in return. Thom's bossiness becomes a love language eventually, especially when it's clear he and Clay can be a good team.

Of course, as their feelings grow and pressure from the governor increase, both Thom and Clay have to decide if it's worth it to keep being fake in love for their jobs, admit to deeper feelings and be together for real, or walk away completely. The third act -- ooh boy I was so anxious about how Thom and Clay weren't communicating honestly. It was very compelling to see what would happen and how they would figure it out.

The politics stuff here is pretty realistic because I was pissed off a lot of the time at the fakery behind the machine. Everything is given a proper (and deserved!) conclusion, although a few things are more implied-to-happen as opposed to a really great on-page comeuppance. The ending wasn't exactly rushed, but I would have liked a bit more after the big third-act decision for more lovey-dovey stuff. But that's just me!

The steam was middle, I would say. I'm a bit skewed when it comes to that because I have high standards. It wasn't exactly super explicit all the time, but there were multiple scenes. Honestly, the way the intimacy built between Thom and Clay was more important, and the sex reflected the way it grew between them. Thom also really accepts his new attraction to Clay in the most in-character way that was actually kind of funny and refreshing. Clay's sexuality is never explicitly stated, but it doesn't really matter in the scheme of the plot.

I received an advance copy of this book free in exchange for an honest unbiased review.

I made it to chapter five before giving up on this one. I know everyone deserves love, but I hate all these characters so much that I don't care if they find it. All the characters in this book are irredeemably terrible. I hate all of them. And since it's a romance novel I know they're not going to receive an ending befitting their awfulness.

First off thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing, MIRA and NetGalley for allowing me to read this digital ARC

Secondly....I always love a good rom-com...but this book for me fell flat. I considered not finishing on multiple occasions because I really wanted to like Thom and Clay. Together they are someone ok but on their own, Thom is an asshat and Clay a ditz! They were hard to really like, the story was too similar to the well loved Red, White and Royal Blue.

Overall this book just felt exhausting and really lacked what I would consider a true rom com