Lucie V.'s Reviews > Hate

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley (thank you SOURCEBOOK Bloom Books). All thoughts and opinions are my own.

✅ Sexual tension and some smut
✅️ Hate/lust relationship (she hates them but lusts after them)
✅ Future RH
✅ Revenge
✅ Strong and driven main character
✅ Some thriller
✅ Good pace and entertaining
✅(🆗) Plot
✅(🆗) Love interests (I like Steele and Kodi, but Archer can kiss my ass, and not in a sexy way)
🆗 Lack of backstory / Plot holes
❗️❗️Mild cliffhanger
❗️❗️Trigger warnings: mention of witnessing a murder (past), claustrophobia, stalker, some bullying/controlling behavior

3.5 stars

I have mixed feelings about this book. It was a page-turner, entertaining and addictive, but some aspects of it were underdeveloped and lacking, and while I enjoyed reading Hate, a part of my brain kept thinking about those details that annoyed me while I was enjoying the ride with Madison Kate and her guys.

"This was war and there were no fucking rules. No polite etiquette. Only the brutal and bloodthirsty survived."

Madison Kate, MK, and her best friend Bree decided to go to an illegal fight in the town’s close amusement park on the night of Halloween, and that’s when Madison Kate’s life went to hell. Shots were fired, a girl was killed, and she was framed as the “mastermind” behind what is now called Riot Night. Her rich father managed to make sure she wouldn’t go to jail, but still sent her away “for her protection”, although Madison Kate knows that it was only so she wouldn’t sully his reputation. After almost a year away, she is back in Shadow Grove, where she meets again with the three men who framed her, and she swears that she will get her revenge and destroy them.

There are many plot holes that make everything just too conveniently fall into place to create the setting the author wanted. For example, the fact that people were blackmailed/forced to attend the city’s new university (how were they blackmailed into it? Why? WTF?), all so they could all carpool and see each other every day, or the fact that Madison Kate’s dad and stepmother left for Italy the minute she came back, leaving her and her and the 3 guys alone in the mansion with no adult figure around, except for the staff that is mostly invisible and never interacted with Madison Kate. There is a stalker plot that appears near the middle of the book that, while intriguing, seems to come out of nowhere.

There is also the lack of backstory on Madison Kate and her dad. We know that she witnessed her mom being murdered when she was 11 and that her father is crazy rich, but that’s about it. Her dad’s image is everything to him, and he turns everything into a publicity stunt. Still, besides that, there is only the unclear part where it’s said that he took it upon himself to unify the city and renovate the more desolate districts, even building a university that he forced people to attend (it was said that people were blackmailed…). Is he an entrepreneur? Did he finance it out of the goodness of his heart (not likely), is it because he wanted to gain the city’s adoration? Why did he do it? I don’t understand his real motivation, and since he’s absent for the whole book because he's conveniently away on a trip, we don’t get to know anything about him. Also, what happened to the gangs that were fighting in the rougher part of the city? Did Madison Kate’s dad smile at them and it all went away? Because we don’t really hear about them anymore, even though both gangs still exist and have active members.

Madison Kate is a good main character, most of the time. Her silly pranks annoyed me more than they impressed me, but she did have one or two nastier plans to get revenge on the guys. She is full of anger and resentment, she has a violent streak when pushed, and she does not back down. I liked her vibe, she felt strong and badass, without overdoing it.

I stared back at him for a long moment, studying his ice-blue eyes for any scrap of apology. Any morsel of human decency. I found fucking nothing.

Archer D’Arth is the leader of the little trio, and he seems to hate Madison Kate for some reason… while also being attracted to her and weirdly protective and even possessive at times. I know he is meant to be this way, but he was so annoying with his alpha macho bullshit, always trying to control MK and impose his way on her. I understand why she hated him at first, and his behavior only encouraged this hatred to fester. He needs to turn this around if he wants to have a shred of a chance with MK because there is no way that she will let him get close to her with this shitty attitude, even if he is smoking hot.

Kodiak Jones is a shameless flirt who has an easy vibe and adapts to pretty much everything Madison Kate throws his way. He seems to be the goofier one, the one who takes everything in stride and makes it clear that he is interested in MK, even though she hates him. Max Steele seems to be the sweetest of the three guys, and the only one that might not have been directly implicated in framing Madison Kate. He follows Archer around though and listens to everything he says, just like Kodi does, so he’s not truly innocent either. Steele and Kodi know the secrets they’re keeping from Madison Kate and refuse to tell her out of loyalty for Archer, and I respect that, but I can’t wait for them to stand up to Archer’s shit and be better for MK. It’s not enough to be kind and sweet if they betray her trust and try to control her just like Archer does.

"I hated them, and I needed to stop forgetting that fact."


How fucked up was that, that the three guys responsible for derailing my life were now the ones I leaned on?

Madison Kate’s relationship with the guys is a hate-to-love, but while I do enjoy a good “push and pull” game, it fell flat at times in this book. I was happy that she hated them and resented them for what they did to her, and I wanted her to hold on to this anger, but while she was trying to get rid of them with annoying (and mostly immature) pranks, she also couldn’t resist them because they are all oh so sexy and muscled. She was thinking of ways to ruin their lives, yet she let them dictate her life, “forcing her” to hang out with them, or letting them be nice and cuddly when she had a panic attack… All in all, it's the same emotions, but the way it was written made it seem like she was so attracted to them that she was forcing herself to remain angry and had to keep reminding herself why she hated them, instead of being full of hate and resentment, but having it slowly chipped away by their sexiness and having to fight her attraction to them.

I have to say that it got better in the second half of the book. She reminded herself why she hated the guys, and she held onto this anger, and when she let herself forget it, it was for a good reason, like them being nice to her, not just because she was drooling over their abs. There are still a lot of secrets between them, and everything would be so much simpler if they just sat down to clear the air and explain what really happened a year ago, but MK is too stubborn, and the guys refuse to explain for some mysterious reason so they are stuck in this weird place where Madison Kate wants to be able to forgive them and understand their actions, but she can’t because they continue to lie to her.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, and it was easy to read just one more chapter. It has an addictive quality to it, but there are also some parts of the plot that were just too convenient or glossed over, and the way the hate-to-love relationships are written was not exactly what I was looking for. I will read the second book because I am curious about where this is going, and as I said, there is something addictive that made me keep reading one more chapter and with the way Hate ends, I want to read the next book and see what will happen and how Madison Kate will deal with the three men.


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