‘On the Corner of Love and Hate’ by Nina Bocci

‘On the Corner of Love and Hate’ is the first book of Nina Bocci’s ‘Hopeless Romantics’ series. It is also Nina’s solo debut. I really enjoyed her writing style; it was fluent, lighthearted and intriguing. I have been struggling with two thoughts from the beginning till the end….

What will happen next?
I don’t want this to end.

So to say the least it was a pretty fast read for me 🙂

Emmanuelle, aka Emma, Peroni was born and raised in Hope Lake. Emma is smart, kind, hardworking and really loyal. She loves her hometown and the only time she was away was when she was in college. Her father is Hope Lake’s mayor and he has been the mayor as long as she can remember. However, he decided to retire and for the next elections he is supporting Hope Lake’s golden boy, Cooper Campbell-Endicott. Cooper’s mother is Governor Clare Campbell and his ancestors were one of the town’s founders so it is easier to say he has big shoes to fill. Emma and Cooper grew up together. As kids, they were really close since they were both grew up with politicians and had to attend most of the festivities with their parents. After college both Cooper and Emma moved back to Hope Lake and started working for Hope Lake Community Development Office (CDO). However, now their close friendship is long gone and they can barely tolerate each other. He has been slacking his responsibilities in CDO due to his campaign work and Emma had to pick up the slack. As you can imagine she is not really happy with extra workload and Cooper’s attitude. Since Cooper is known as a ladies man and his social calendar seems full with dates, Emma assumes Cooper is just using elections as an excuse. What she doesn’t realize is Cooper has too much on his plate and not enough time to do everything. He is also under a lot of stress because he doesn’t want to disappoint his mom and Emma’s dad. When Emma’s parents pursue her to become Cooper’s campaign manager, she starts to understand Cooper’s busy schedule and the pressure he is under. But the problem is Emma has a huge crush on Cooper and she is having hard time to let go of the past. To tell you the truth, at one point it gets annoying and I just wanted to shake her so that she can act like an adult and not like an immature adolescent. The biggest problem between Cooper and Emma is lack of communication. Instead of talking with each other to solve the issues, they ran away. Towards the end of the book you finally get more insight and see how the misunderstandings caused by lack of communication effected their relationship. I wish this book was written in dual POV. It would have been great to understand Cooper and his actions more.

‘On the Corner of Love and Hate’ is sweet, charming and lighthearted small-town enemies to lovers story. Thank you so much Nina for taking me to an amazingly sweet journey. I cannot pass without mentioning it, I loved the side characters including town’s meddling elder population 🙂 I am looking forward to read Henry and Nick’s stories. Second book of the series ‘Meet Me on Love Lane’ will be released on December 20^th and I cannot wait to read it 🙂