By: Sajni Patel
Blurb:
Liya Thakkar is a successful biochemical engineer, takeout enthusiast, and happily single woman. The moment she realizes her parents’ latest dinner party is a setup with the man they want her to marry, she’s out the back door in a flash. Imagine her surprise when the same guy shows up at her office a week later — the new lawyer hired to save her struggling company. What’s not surprising: he’s not too thrilled to see her either after that humiliating fiasco.
Jay Shah looks good on paper…and off. Especially if you like that whole gorgeous, charming lawyer-in-a-good-suit thing. He’s also arrogant and infuriating. As their witty office banter turns into late night chats, Liya starts to think he might be the one man who truly accepts her. But falling for each other means exposing their painful pasts. Will Liya keep running, or will she finally give love a real chance?
Review:
***Trigger Warning for sexual assault***
The Trouble with Loving You put me through the wringer. I cried a lot at the end. I love it when a loving family embraces someone not from one. It always gets me.
Liya is a driven woman. She’s earned her MBA and has just been given a promotion that puts her very high up in her company. She has a group of female friends that are supportive and loving. Her family, on the other hand, is a different story. Her father is emotionally and verbally abusive, and her mother is so beaten down that she’s unable to stand up to it. I feel for Liya, her situation is complicated, and you can tell she feels like she’s being torn apart.
Jay has his own issues, but he’s also got the support system of a very loving family. They’ve been through the traumatic death of their father years before and come out stronger on the other side. It’s heartwarming. The way he pursues Liya does at times fight with my enjoyment of making sure consent is acknowledged and that a woman’s answer is taken at her word, but it doesn’t go too far. He’s never domineering, and I only noticed it because most of the newer books I’ve read have been leaning very clear on no being no. Part of that was Liya wanting him to keep asking, even though she would never have admitted it. She had high walls built up, and his methods helped bring them down and open her to love.
This was a kind of enemies to lovers romance. Often, the enemies part is too heavy, and it’s difficult to believe that they could overcome their issues and fall in love. That did not happen in The Trouble with Loving You. Liya and Jay had a rough start and didn’t like each other at first. However, they never went hard into the bitter, loathing enemy territory. It made the romance believable and that much sweeter.
The Trouble with Romance was the first book in a series, but I don’t know the series’s name. Goodreads has been pretty poor about getting that information updated, though that might be an issue with the publishers, not with Goodreads. The next book in the series comes out in September, and it’s about a character I’m eager to read. A few of the book characters were married, but there are at least a couple that I hope get their own stories.
4/5
Dynamite Review 