The road to love is bumpy in Charlotte Stein’s WHILE YOU WERE SEETHING— a sexy and heartwarming contemporary romance filled with fake dating hijinks, delicious forced proximity, and top tier banter.
Daisy Emmett has been enemies with famous romance author Caleb Miller since they were in college together, and time hasn’t lessened their mutual loathing. So when she agrees to manoeuvre him through a PR disaster of his own making, she knows it’s not going to be easy. She just doesn’t realise how not easy until they somehow end up trapped in the same truck, on an endless road trip from one book tour stop to another, bantering and butting heads along the way.
Then, even more people appear to be mistaking her for the woman he dedicates all his books to. The love of his life, his adored beloved—the one who doesn’t actually exist. Now they’re trapped into pretending she does and that Daisy is her, each fake kiss and phoney embrace ratcheting up the tension to the point where enemies suddenly seems a lot closer to lovers than either of them would like.
Or so they’re telling themselves.
But sometimes it’s hard to be sure, when seething turns into something so much more…
Daisy Emmett has been enemies with famous romance author Caleb Miller since they were in college together, and time hasn’t lessened their mutual loathing. So when she agrees to manoeuvre him through a PR disaster of his own making, she knows it’s not going to be easy. She just doesn’t realise how not easy until they somehow end up trapped in the same truck, on an endless road trip from one book tour stop to another, bantering and butting heads along the way.
Then, even more people appear to be mistaking her for the woman he dedicates all his books to. The love of his life, his adored beloved—the one who doesn’t actually exist. Now they’re trapped into pretending she does and that Daisy is her, each fake kiss and phoney embrace ratcheting up the tension to the point where enemies suddenly seems a lot closer to lovers than either of them would like.
Or so they’re telling themselves.
But sometimes it’s hard to be sure, when seething turns into something so much more…
Title: While You Were Seething
Author: Charlotte Stein
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Expected Publication Date: April 14, 2026
Review:
Thank you to Macmillan Audio, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this title to read and give my honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
I love a good enemies to lovers story. The tension it creates and the slow burn chemistry that is included gets me every time. I was excited to read this story simply because of that. I had the Kindle version and also was granted access to the audio copy so I did a read along with the audio.
I'll start with the audio part of this review to get it out of the way. I believe this is my first book narrated by Imogen Wilde. I enjoyed her voice enough. She did well to change it when she was narrating the male part but I wasn't able to click with her American accent. Her inflections felt off to me, especially during the spicy scenes. There was no emotion in the narration of the dialogue during those parts for me and it really took me out of the story. There were also some huge pauses in the narration making me think a new chapter was beginning. But then I'd realize it was in the middle of the scene and it just didn't make any sense to me. I definitely enjoyed reading the material more than listening to it.
Daisy Emmet and Caleb Miller have been nemeses since college. Always bickering, throwing shade at each other. When they are forced to travel together for a book tour, Daisy begins to realize there might be more to their relationship. And when they take up fake dating, things truly escalate.
If you like a book with a lot of internal dialogue, this one is for you. Told from Daisy's POV, I feel it would have done better to have some insight from Caleb. The way he is portrayed by Daisy just did not sit well with me. He's ornery, yes, but then there are parts where he is more tender where you think he's turning over a new leaf. Only to be side lined again by his grumpy demeanor. It felt like I was being thrown back and forth and never sure where I would land. I found it hard to connect with his character because I felt like he was Jekyll and Hyde for most of the book.
The plot is more of a back story to the romance in this book. Honestly, it would have been better to have more plot. I felt like the whole book revolved around Daisy figuring out her feelings towards Caleb with not many scenes that pushed the story forward for their relationship to grow and change. Their relationship was just so weird. Since they knew each other prior, and there are some "then" scenes that show this, I can understand there is background but even with these scenes, I didn't really understand their relationship prior.
Overall this one was just ok for me. A fast enough read but it just didn't hit as I would have liked it to.
Author:
Charlotte Stein is the RT and DABWAHA nominated author of over fifty short stories, novellas and novels. When not writing deeply emotional and intensely sexy books, she can be found eating jelly turtles, watching terrible sitcoms and occasionally lusting after hunks. For more on Charlotte, visit: www.charlottestein.net
No comments:
Post a Comment