Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti

TL;DR: This was aggressively fine.
Source: NetGalley, thank you so much!

Plot: Not real enemies become lovers and seemingly random hijinks.
Characters: These two were… not that impressive to be honest. I wasn’t sold on either one and honestly got them confused the entire way through.
Setting: A vaguely regency (maybe?) time period. I distinctly recall one location, that was it.
Romance: Seeing as how I got confused on who was speaking when, I can’t say I was super into the romance.

Summary:

Celebrated authoress Lady Georgiana Cleeve has achieved fame and fortune. Unfortunately, she’s also acquired an enemy: the enigmatic Lady Darling, whose spine-tingling plots appear to be pulled straight from Georgiana’s own manuscripts. What’s a stubborn, steely writer to do? Unmask her rival, of course.

But unmasking doesn’t go according to plan—because Lady Darling is actually Cat Lacey, the butler’s daughter and object of Georgiana’s very secret, very embarrassing teenage infatuation.

Cat Lacey has spent a decade clawing her family out of poverty. The last thing she needs is to be distracted by the stunning(ly pretentious) Lady Georgiana Cleeve. But Cat can’t seem to escape her infuriatingly beautiful rival—including at the eerie manor where they both plan to set their next books. The plot unexpectedly thickens, however, when the novelists find themselves trapped in the manor together. In between ghostly moans and spectral staff, Cat and Georgiana come face-to-face with real danger: the scorching passion that’s been haunting their rivalry all along.

Thoughts:

I can’t say there is anything particularly wrong with this one. It was okay, perhaps even cute at times! Our two leads are both Gothic writers with a penchant for writing the same things, to the point where one is convinced the other is stealing her ideas and a rivalry is born.

Then they meet in a ‘haunted’ ruin of a house, the particulars of which is very confusing to me (who arranged it, who kept the house, how did they get permission?). A death! A mystery! Then some family drama of course unfolds and it just felt… okay.

My biggest complaint was I genuinely could not tell the voice on these two apart. The chapters switch between Cat and Georgiana and its basically reading the same character, except occasionally one waxes melodramatic and acts like a martyr.

So I didn’t hate my time but I did doze off once or twice. And I honestly doubt I’ll remember this well in the future, if at all. I’ve heard the others in the series are fantastic so perhaps a series fan would get more out of it?