Audiobook Review: If You Hate Me (The Toronto Terror #1) by Helena Hunting

I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

If You Hate Me by Helena Hunting
Series: The Toronto Terrors #1
Narrator: Connor Crais, C.J. Bloom
on March 7, 2024
Genres: Adult Sports Romance
Length: 13:14
Source: the author
Format: Audiobook
My Rating:
Goodreads
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Barnes & Noble, Buy on Audible

Blurb:

A brand new standalone hate-to-love, brother’s best friend hockey romance.

My new roommates are two pro hockey players. 
First, my manwhore older brother, and second, his seriously hot best friend (who I seriously hate). 
This was a last resort. 
No one should be sleeping on a futon that smells like Cheetos and ball sweat. 
But here I am, trying to get my life together.

Tristan Stiles is the bane of my existence.
He never wears a shirt. 
We can’t seem to stop fighting. 
He’s an arrogant playboy with a filthy reputation. 
Sure, I had a crush on him when I was fourteen, but that was a long time ago. 
I know better than to trust him.

I just need to survive long enough to find a new job and get a new place.
And not accidentally let Tristan rail me into next week.

My Review

So when the author was posting about how this was going to be the spiciest book she’d ever written, I was all like, nah, what about Darren and Charlene in Pucked Love? But guess what, she was correct! If you follow the author you’ve see that she spent some time before the release of this book knitting little pickles. If you read or listen to the story as I did, you’ll understand why! And there isn’t really any safe bit of the story before it gets hot, nope the very start of the book is a scene that had me fanning myself and probably blushing a little bit.

This is definitely an enemies to lovers story. Beatrix (Rix) and Tristan do really hate each other. While Rix has good reason for it, the way Tristan treated her when she was younger, Tristan’s reasons for it are definitely ones that make him a pretty big a-hole. However when the two of them decide to get the hate-lust attraction out of their systems, it only seems to make it go deeper, so that they need more. Especially for Tristan more than even for Rix.

As they decided to keep it on the down-low from their other roommate who is not only Tristan’s best friend, but also Rix’s brother, the two of them got to know each other. Even though he’d always been prickly and a bit of a dick, Rix began to see that Tristan could and did have a soft caring side, epsecially for those who were important to him. While they tried to keep their own friends with benefits situation quiet, both of them were constantly confronted with Flip’s own extreme playboy behavior as he brought puck bunnies home night after night, sometimes more than one at a time.

Halfway through I was definitely on the edge of my seat as things seemed to be going mostly well, and I just didn’t know how the author was going to break the couple up or throw a wrench into this almost perfect world they were living in. I knew it would probably have something to do with when Flip found out. And while it did, that doesn’t mean that even figuring that out would make things all better. While I understood Tristan’s reasons for the things he did and why he pushed Rix away, it was also frustrating that he didn’t realize he was behaving the exact same way as the person who had caused him to feel that way.

In the end I loved how we now have another group of characters that I enjoy spending time with and can’t wait to see how their own stories can play out. Who will get their HEAs and how.

I listened to the audio-e-galley, and I know there will be changes. The narrators were perfect, although this male narrator does make me cringe sometimes with his female “voice” in certain situations. He’s just got such a “manly” voice it almost doesn’t work for that. Another thing that my little midwestern American ears noticed was how they said Toronto. I asked the author and I know that it was done the way it would be said by those who live there, and I like that! I definitely wouldn’t have gotten that from reading. So I recommend listening if you get the chance. Although there were a few times I pulled into work in the morning in the middle of one of “those” scenes, or turned on the car when I was leaving after work and had to make sure my volume was down so people near my car wouldn’t hear that same scene start back up.