Dear Reader,

What happens when a mean girls inspired scheme has the power to unite you with the love of your life but could also erupt your friendships and leave you questioning your identity?

As Long As You Loathe Me, Swati Hedge’s third romance novel, follows Meera and Lucy who live in West Coast town Madre Maria. Meera’s best friend Lucy ended their friendship with no explanation. Now, Meera is forced to watch Lucy have it all: cheerleading captain, an almost certain acceptance letter into NYU any day now, and even devoted boyfriend Sushant who is Meera’s long term crush and neighbor. Meera makes new friends Valeria and Ron who help her devise her plan, “Date Sushant and Dethrone Lucy.”

Little does Meera know that Lucy is doing it all to cover-up her biggest secret. At a visit to Meera’s Dads’ coffee shop, a tarot reading predicts a rocky semester of upheaval for Lucy. What awaits Lucy? An annoying foreign exchange student, familial reunions, a new job opportunity, and an ever growing passion for the person that challenges her sense of identity.

Hedge’s writing is funny and entrancing without sacrificing the real and raw emotions of high school reality. With likable characters and delightfully queer storylines, As Long As You Loathe Me is a sapphic rivals-to-lovers that will leave you thoroughly charmed and hopeful.

Sincerely,

this reviewer

P.S.
As Long As You Loathe Me is publishing on March 31, 2026 through Random House. Thank you to NetGalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

4/5⭐️This book was quite a refresh from some other books I had read recently which I found myself struggling through. This book felt honest, light and easy to read. I found the characters funny and relatable and the plot to be cheesy but not in a bad way. I enjoyed the representation of people of color as well as a nonbinary character, pansexuality (which I find is not as often represented) and representation of anxiety, though I wish the later was dug into a little deeper than the surface level that the book seemed to do. This was a quick and easy read as aforementioned and I got through it in just a day.

TLDR: Read if you are looking for a funny lighthearted and easy YA read with good representation and an adorable sapphic couple.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for letting me read this book early in exchange for an honest review!

Loved it! Tropes were beautifully executed and it delivered on the John Tucker Must Die vibe. Very easy to read quickly. Highly recommend!

Nothing is what it seems in this debut YA novel by Swati Hegde. Meera is a typical teenager whose best friend abandoned her and stole the boy she had a crush on, her neighbor Sushant. Her former best friend Lucy is head cheerleader, beautiful, and popular. Meera is fed up and creates a “Mean Girls” style plan to bring her down and steal back the boy that she wanted first. Another problem Meera needs to tackle is Café Kismet. Meera’s dads’ café is on the verge of closing and she has a brilliant idea…keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer. Meera can use Lucy to bring in business and to bring her down. What could go wrong?

This book transported me back to my childhood! It captured the essence of identity, crushes, and love. The dad with the tarot cards was incredibly sweet and made me laugh out loud. The dads were amazing and supported Meera, but they also allowed her to make her own mistakes and embrace her true self. It is so hard to be who you want to be and show who you are and when you are in a small town, your business is on full display. The courage these FMCs showed was empowering. Also let’s applaud Sushant and Julien who were incredibly nice guys. They supported the FMCs no matter what. This is a great example of friendship. All the side characters were well-developed and beautifully written. The plot was engaging and entertaining, and I couldn’t put it down. I stayed up way too late reading this, but it was worth it. Pacing was perfect, the story was beautiful, and I could feel the passion and heart that went into writing it. Well done!

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Children's Books for the ARC, my opinions are my own.

📖Book Review: As Long as You Loathe Me by Swati Hegde
⭐️ 3.5/5

This book was such a sweet, heartwarming read. At its core, it’s about two ex–best friends who find their way back to each other and realize their friendship has always been something more. I loved the high school setting because it perfectly captured that time in life where you’re still figuring out who you are, what you want, and who you love. Everyone thinks they have their life mapped out in high school… until they don’t. Swati Hegde really nailed that messy, exciting, and terrifying part of growing up.

What stood out to me most was the perspective on falling for someone of the same sex for the first time, the mix of exhilaration and fear felt so honest and real. Meera and Lucy’s relationship had such a natural progression, and I loved how the dual POVs let us see both sides of their feelings. And I wouldn’t complain if we got a spinoff about Natalie and Julien’s Parisian romance; I was invested in them too!

Overall, this was a really cute, sweet story that captures the highs and lows of love and self-discovery in high school. Solid 3.5/5 stars from me.

This was so much fun! Meera and Lucy had a great friends-to-enemies-to-lovers dynamic, and loner girl-cheerleader romances are one of my favorite types of pairings. I also kind of wanted Meera’s dads to adopt me. However, out of everyone, the exchange student Julien was hands down my favorite character. I do wish the other supporting characters had been a little more fleshed out since they felt somewhat surface level to me, even Sushant.

The song titles at the start of each chapter weren’t really my thing, but probably would appeal more to fans to the songs being mentioned.

While this is minor, Madre Maria being a mostly vegan town but somehow also anti-gay stood out as unrealistic to me. If such a vegan utopia existed, it’d be the most queer-friendly place on the planet. People with empathy for animals tend to have empathy for humans, too. Also, a large percentage of vegans are LGBTQ+.

I received an advanced copy from the publisher and am voluntarily leaving this review.

As Long as You Loathe Me is a sharp, funny, and heartfelt YA romance that perfectly captures the chaos of teenage crushes, complicated friendships, and figuring out who you are. Meera Rao-George is determined to finally win over her neighbor Sushant and take down Lucy Hughson, her ex-best friend turned cheerleader rival. But what starts out as a plan for revenge quickly shifts when Meera and Lucy find themselves spending more time together—and realizing their old connection might not be so broken after all.

Hegde does a great job balancing the drama and humor of high school life with deeper, more emotional themes. Lucy’s struggles with anxiety and identity add a lot of heart to the story, and the chemistry between her and Meera feels natural, full of both tension and tenderness. The push-and-pull of love versus pride makes the romance extra compelling, and by the end, it’s hard not to root for them to take that leap.

I loved the tension with the two girls having such different understanding of their relationship at the start, with Lucy already being aware of her feelings and Meera not, and wondering how we would get to the point where Meera understood her own fixation on Lucy. I also really enjoyed Meera as an initially unsympathetic protagonist, who pushes ahead with her plan despite all the warnings from others in her life. Additionally, I appreciated the exploration of how things are not always black and white when it comes to ending relationships and starting new ones, and how Lucy's understanding of this grows after she finds herself in similar circumstances to the ones she'd previously judged her father for.

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House Children’s for this arc for my honest review.
4 out of 5 stars/Dual pov First person(Meera and Lucy)
Meera and Lucy used to be best friends but now they are more like enemies. Meera’s main goal now is to take Lucy down by breaking up her relationship with Sushant who is also the boy that Meera is in love with.
Will the scheme to get the guy work or will Meera realize that maybe she never wanted the guy to begin with?
I loved this book. I was cheering both Meera and Lucy on as characters the whole time.

Mean girls, but make it sapphic? Say less.
This story is what young adult, rom-com dreams are made of.
I need this to be made into a movie. Like, today. Maybe even yesterday.

PERFECT for lovers of:
- Sapphic romance
- Young adult romance
- Enemies to lovers
- Plotting/scheming trope

Meera and Lucy used to be best friends.
That is, until Lucy randomly ended the friendship after a summer away and started dating Sushant, the boy Meera was in love with.
Two once best friends are now sworn enemies.
Meera devises a plan to take Lucy down and steal her boyfriend. But things don’t always go as planned, and her scheme to get the guy may just end in her getting the girl instead.

I love, love, loved this.
This story somehow feels like pure nostalgia. I can’t explain it, but this is exactly what a younger version of myself thought high school was going to be like.
I would read this even if it was 1000 pages long. I was just that into it.
The drama, the tension, the romance. Give it to me.

I was crying and begging Lucy to finally open up to meera throughout this entire thing. I fear secrets and miscommunication will be the death of me.
Of course, when things work out and she gets the girl, I am inevitability brought back to life. Thank you Swati.

Love the representation here!
Meera, her parents and Sushant were all Indian. We get to see some culture that doesn’t typically get a lot of appreciation in books.
I thought it added a very nice flare.

Also, the writing? Spectacular.
This is the kind of book that I could probably read in a single sitting if I tried. It is just so fun and well-written, you can really fly through it without even realizing.

Perfection overall!! I will probably remember this forever. MY QUEER MEAN GIRLS RETELLING!

Huge thank you to Netgalley, Random House Children’s Books | Delacorte Romance and author Swati Hedge for providing me with the eARC of “As Long as You Loathe me”, in exchange for my honest review!
Publication date: March 31st, 2026
Reviewed on Goodreads: August 19th, 2025

I absolutely adored reading Swati Hedge's YA novel As Long As You Loathe Me. While it had some Mean Girl vibes, I love that we are in an era where young people are actually nice to each other. When I was young, young people were the absolute worst, but now every young person I know is inclusive and friendly and wants to make the world a little better for everyone, and I'm here for it. In that vein, there aren't really any bad guys or severely unlikable characters in this book. Everyone is simply doing the best they can with the cards they've been dealt. And it's also super queer and extremely multicultural. Really just the perfect book.

Amazing book loved the characters and plot. I couldn't stop reading I stayed up all night. I loved the book so much thank you for the arc.

I really struggled to get into this one. I loved the plot idea, it reminded me of Mean Girls. However, I didn't really feel any chemistry between Lucy or Meera, which made it hard to buy into. For me, too much of the book was focused on Meera and Lucy loving Sushant, and the transition to them loving each other seemed rushed and hard to believe.

There were a few things I liked, such as Lucy's struggle with her identity. I felt it was very similar to what a lot of younger adults go through when coming out. Lucy's mom's character in particular reminded me so much of many unsupportive members of my own family, it was almost triggering at times, yet very realistic. I also enjoyed Lucy's heart to heart with Julien and her having him as a confidant.

Overall, this book while maybe great for some readers, wasn't quite my cup of tea. I liked the idea, but the execution of the romance didn't quite live up to my hopes. 3.1/5 stars.

i’ve seen hedge’s adult romances floating around but i saw she’d written a sapphic ya romance and came SPRINTING!!

this truly was mean girls coded as comp’d and i adored it. every second of this was a delight and i’d like to see more of her in the YA space! maybe now ill have to check out her other romance books 😌

Yes! Swati Hedge delivered another wonderful book with thrilling tension and swoony characters and atmosphere. I was thirsty and this satiated me.

Swati Hegde’s sapphic YA romance is messy in all the right ways. Meera’s revenge plan—steal her ex-best friend’s boyfriend and reclaim her pride—spirals into a tender, complicated reconnection with Lucy, the cheerleader who broke her heart long before Sushant ever could.

The emotional tension between Meera and Lucy is the real draw here. Their history simmers beneath every scene, and while the forgiveness comes a little too fast for the damage done, the romance still lands with charm and vulnerability. Lucy’s anxiety and identity struggles add depth, even if some resolutions feel rushed.

If you love enemies-to-lovers, ex-best friends with unresolved feelings, and teen drama with heart, this one’s worth the ride—flaws and all.

This was such a great romance novel and had that element that I was wanting from the description, I was engaged from start to finish. It uses the young adult element to it's advantage and was able to create characters that I was wanting and enjoyed in this type of story. Swati Hegde has a strong writing style and was glad I got to read this and get into this world.

A lesbian best friends/enemies to lovers romance is right up my alley!

Meera and Lucy were best friends, until one year when Lucy returned from summer camp with a new car, a new attitude, and a new best friend. To make matters worse, she started dating Sushant, Meera's next-door neighbor and longtime crush. A year later, Lucy and Sushant are going strong, in the running for prom royalty and planning their collegiate futures around each other. As Meera watches from the sidelines, she comes up with a plan to win the boy and get back at Lucy for ditching her. But when she and Lucy start to get close again and Meera's time spent with Sushant isn't what she imagined, who knows that the future holds?

I recommend this book to fans of romance, sapphic literature, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, and tarot cards.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC of this novel.

I think that Hedge is a lot better at writing YA books that adult books, so I enjoyed this more than Match Me If You Can. I did, however, think that all of the characters forgave each other way too quickly for everything throughout the book - for abandoning friendships, for revenge plots, for cheating, etc. etc.