Stupid Love by Riley Hart

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Title: Stupid Love
Author: Riley Hart
Series: Stumbling into Love #1
Published by: Indie
Release Date: May 20, 2020
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 382
Genres: Contemporary, LGBT, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2023 Backlist Reader Challenge, Lenoreo's 2023 COYER Chapter 2, Lenoreo's 2023 Diversity Reading Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:

Blurb:

Elijah
Out of all the apartments in Atlanta, I ended up with the worst neighbor. Shaw Hastings is a headache. He's so full of himself it makes me crazy. Our official language is snarky banter--which I don't enjoy, I swear. I've got eyes for my bestie Danny, anyway. I need to figure out if he feels the same, so I email an advice column written by a serial dater, who's just as annoying as Shaw. Now, I'm asking myself why am I thinking less about Danny and having a blast virtually flirting with Anonymous?

Shaw
I don't know why I like my adorable neighbor, Elijah Coleman. We've got nothing in common, yet somehow he's both boring and kinda fun. He reminds me of this guy who emailed my advice column, so it shouldn't be surprising that--oops--they're the same person. Imagine me then offering to help Elijah get Danny in real life just because it means spending time with him. We go from angry neighbors, to frenemies taking dancing lessons together, to a flirtatious friendship where I enjoy making him happy.

No matter how much we fight it, Elijah and I are stumbling toward the L word. It's messy and scary, but then he smiles, strikes a beautiful dance pose, or kisses me, and suddenly it's not so bad. He's ruining me, and I sort of like it. Stupid love. Unfortunately, with my track record of running scared, I just might wreck the only real relationship I've ever had.

Stupid Love is a low angst, frenemies to lovers story, with an anonymous advice column, flirty emails, banter and other fun shenanigans. There's no love triangle or cheating in this book.

My Review:

4.5 stars — This one started out cute, but I also wasn’t necessarily connecting with their bantering as well as I’d hoped…it was a 3.5 star type book.  But about half way through this book totally skyrocketed into 5 star territory for me, and I loved the ending!  So I settled on something in between.

Like I said, I enjoyed the start and enjoyed Eli and Shaw, but they had this weird vibe between them at the start.  They really didn’t understand each other, and while they had fun bantering, it had a bit of a weird undercurrent in it.  Not to mention that at that point in their bantering, they were a bit…harsher?  Or it felt that way because they didn’t know each other?  I totally know people with personalities like this, so it’s 100% valid, it’s just not something that my sensitive heart really enjoys as much.

But then they sort of left the Danny stuff behind, and they started to really get to know one another, and then their bantering started to feel more…I don’t know…it was just cuter.  I got it more.  I could connect with it.  Because I could feel their hearts underneath it.  And I absolutely loved the way they were connecting on all these different levels, finding out about one another, pushing one another.

They were both really interesting complicated characters.  Both with their flaws, but both with so many endearing qualities as well.  Eli was a good mix of vulnerable about being who he was, but also fierce about being authentic.  I really got that, and I loved seeing it…because you can wholeheartedly be both.  And Shaw was protecting this soft heart that truly cared about people even as he kept himself apart.  Seeing them both grow was very satisfying.

And while it may have taken a bit for them to settle in with one another, once they did they were so cute together!  Cute and hilarious.  They may have been opposites in a lot of ways, but they complemented one another so well.

They seriously just made my heart so happy at the end.  I love that.