Kiss To Conquer by Anna B. DoeMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was kindly provided an ARC of this book via the author in exchange for an honest review.
This is a hate to love romance with a little bit of a twist. In this case, there is no misunderstanding or forbidden reason for the main characters to hate each other. Our female lead Callie, has actually given our male lead Hayden every reason to hate her. She did something to him in high school that any reasonable person would find hard to forgive. Hayden and Callie went to high school together, she was the popular cheerleader from a rich family. He was the poor, shy, scrawny boy on the football team that happened to be good at math. Callie was dating the quarterback and pretty had a wonderful life, but she wasn't the best person. Hayden was a nice guy, had a huge crush on Callie, but didn't have the best home life. I won't spoil things, but several events take place that upset both of their lives completely.
Fast forward a few years and Hayden has found himself at Blairwood, he's successful on the football field, no longer that scrawny, shy kid of old. He has a good supportive group of friends around him, but when Callie shows up their roles are reversed. Callie is basically a hermit only attending classes and hiding in her room or the campus coffee spot. She is physically and mentally scarred from events in her past, and it takes a good portion of the book to find out what actually happened to her and what happened between her and Hayden. Hayden spends roughly the first half of the book avoiding her or being harsh with her. He is angry that his best friend is friendly with her and wants everyone to stay away from her. Unfortunately their paths keep crossing and he is still attracted to her. When he finds out what happened to her and realizes that those events have changed her from the girl he knew in high school, he starts to let her in.
I enjoyed this, but I did feel like it was a bit too long and the pacing was off. The first half of the book felt like it dragged while the second half felt like everything was happening too fast. The author did a great job with getting the reader to feel the emotion of the situations. I went through several different emotional states throughout the book. I love it when an author can get me to feel what the characters are going through and I'm looking forward to more of that from Anna's work. There are also some great side characters in this book and I'm hoping they will star in their own books in the series. Overall, if you like enemies to lovers, and second change romance this is a good one to check out.
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