E-galley Review: P.S. I Hate You by Lauren Connolly

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

PS: I Hate You by Lauren Connolly
Published by Berkley on December 3, 2024
Genres: Adult Contemporary Romance
Pages: 428
Source: the publisher
Format: E-galley
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Also by this author: Letter Late Than Never, Package Makes Perfect
My Rating:

Blurb:

Maddie Sanderson would be proud to honor her older brother’s dying wish, that she scatters his ashes over eight destinations that the adventurous 29-year-old never got to visit before he died from cancer. But in his will, Josh assigned her an impossible partner to help complete the mission—Dominic Perry. Seriously, if Maddie weren’t already at his funeral, she would have killed him for this.

Sure, Dom was Josh’s life-long best friend. He’s also the infuriating man who broke Maddie’s heart back when she was naïve enough to give it to him. But since Dom insists on following the rules and Josh didn’t leave much room for Maddie to argue the matter, they embark together on a farewell trip that spans thousands of miles, exploring new places and revisiting their complicated history along the way.

After a snowstorm leads to a shared bed, Maddie starts to wonder if her brother might be matchmaking from the grave. But when grief also reopens old wounds between them, Maddie will need more than Josh’s ghostly guidance to trust Dom again.

My Review

This is one of those times where I’m mad at myself for putting it off. I still got this read before the pub date, but I put it off a bit past when I’d originally planned to read it because of a readathon and some blog tour review books. But once I picked this up, I was hooked! I wanted nothing more than to just sit and read until the very end. I’m so glad I was reading this over Thanksgiving break so that I was able to do that.

I’m the type of person who always liked any kind of personal connection I can feel to a character or a story, it really does help me get invested in the story. Unfortunately I’m finding that up until now I never quite got the total heartbreak of seeing someone very close to you pass away, but with my stepfather’s passing earlier this year, any death like this, especially from cancer, hits me really hard. But I still loved this story, and it probably made me understand so much more of the hard task on their last location they went to.

This book had so many tropes, but all of them felt like they were done so well. The older brother’s best friend crush. Enemies to lovers. A misunderstanding that kept them apart. The only one bed/close proximity bit, as well as the falling in love along a journey, not quite a road trip exactly though. It was so easily understandable for me why Maddie couldn’t trust things were going to go well, and all the reasons she fought things, even the end, the almost third act break up, I didn’t mind at all. Because it fit. Especially when you took into consideration how horrible a person her mother, grandmother, and even her father had been. But oh my gosh was Dom just perfect in how he handled it in the end. How he was patient. He was so perfect. Especially when we learned about the misunderstanding, it only made me love him more.

But it wasn’t all sad. There was some great banter, hilarious situations to get into. Oh my gosh, the tattoo scene, both hilarious and sad/touching at the same time. Maddie’s friends were wonderful, and I loved Dom’s younger twin brothers. I think this might end up being one of my favorite books of the year. So I’m going to highly recommend this to all my romance reading friends.