Romance, rescue-swimmers, and sibling rivalry in the Florida Keys - an ARC review of Katherine Center’s The Love Haters

I’ve got a confession: I love the Victorian novel. OK, maybe not a confession, as such, and certainly not controversial, but there’s something so satisfying about starting a book and knowing that no matter what trials and tribulations (a phrase I ban my own students from using but wholeheartedly indulge in myself when I’m teaching them about the Victorian novel) the protagonist goes through, they will have a happy ending. In short, the good will be rewarded, the bad punished, and everything is tied up in a neat, little bow. I guess it’s not much of a confession, in that my preferred contemporary genre is the romantic comedy, which fits these requirements to a T.

Even still, I couldn’t help but feel that Katherine Center’s The Love Haters, which features mid-level commercial videographer Katie, who’s on assignment to record a Coast Guard recruitment video of rescue swimmer and bona fide hero Hutch, was heavily influenced by novels written for hopeful audiences nearly two centuries ago. In short, Katie’s job is on the chopping block. Her slightly senior colleague, Cole, tells her the best chance of proving her worth in the oh-so-sexy and apparently cutthroat world of mid-level video production, is to interview Hutch, who lives in the Florida Keys and rose to internet superstardom when he risked his life to rescue a dog. Jennifer Anniston’s dog, in fact. Cole warns Katie that her subject is gloomy, taciturn, wears a perma-frown, and, oh yeah, hates love. How does he know this? He’s his brother. His estranged brother.

Katie’s no stranger to her own battles with love, having been publicly cheated on by her boyfriend, a former coffee shop musician who became a TikTok celebrity and chart-topping singer / songwriter overnight, plunging her into a very cruel public spotlight. As a jilted woman, Cole assumes that she too hates love. And, he’s not exactly wrong. Katie’s real issue, however, is that she hates herself. Hate might be too strong a word. She certainly doesn’t love herself - her appearance, to be specific, and seems to suffer body dysmorphia that can be traced back to a stepmother who essentially made her bathing-suit-phoic. Her issues were only exacerbated by being subject to internet trolls when she caught strays by didn't of her relationship to her ex. Her fear of swimwear has had an impact on her life that suddenly becomes much more relevant: she never learned how to swim. Granted, there are huge swaths of the population who can’t swim (my own children, bless their adolescent hearts, amongst them), but when you’re, you know, shooting video of Coast Guard rescue swimmers, that’s a non-negotiable.

What’s a girl to do? It gets worse for Katie - a card-carrying chromophobe who’s entire wardrobe consists of basic black -  when she arrives in Key West sans luggage. Fortunately, she’s staying with Rue, Hutch and Cole’s aunt who never met a color she didn’t like and owns the charming trailer park, and seemingly half the town, that will house Katie throughout her assignment. Also fortunately, or unfortunately in Katie’s mind, she owns a boutique that features Floridian patterns that look like something out of a unicorn’s fever dream and provides her with an ORANGE! kaftan to wear. It’s when she’s spinning in said garment (without underwear, due to a coffee incident) that Katie comes face to face with Hutch. This, however, is their first encounter but not their meet-cute as such. That comes on their second encounter, as Katie, who has to be talked down from the edge and into a Rue-provided swimsuit by Beanie, her cousin and true hero of the novel, is run down poolside by a Great Dane and skids across the wooden dock. The dog’s owner? Hutch (obviously). The result of George Bailey’s, yup, that’s the dog’s name, enthusiastic hello? An ass-full of splinters. For someone who hasn’t worn a bathing suit for the better half of their life, it’s a lot for Katie to have the unfairly sexy Hutch pull each individual piece of wood out of her nether-regions. Yet, as they have their first real face-to-face, or face-to-haunch, as it were, we, like Katie, realize that Hutch is loquacious, charming, capable (more competence porn!), and a genuinely nice guy. So much so that she can’t bring herself to tell her SWIMMING INSTRUCTOR that she’s the one who will be pretty much stalking him - for work purposes, of course, for the next few weeks. 

Suffice it to say, when she shows up to shoot the recruitment video the next day, there’s an adequate amount of awkwardness when he realizes who she is. That awkwardness reaches peak levels when, after weeks of budding attraction and one relatively sanitized but sweet make-out session, Cole comes to town - the first time he’s done so in over a year - claiming that he’s Katie’s boyfriend. This explains Hutch’s hot-and-cold behavior towards her AND compounds the tension between the already distant brothers. There’s, you guessed it, a backstory there - one that explains Cole’s dismissiveness and conviction that Hutch, the cooler older brother who is better than him in just about every way, hates love - but I’ll leave the reason for their fallout for you to discover. To compound matters, Cole hasn’t told Katie that they’re fake dating, which puts a real crimp in her plan to finally put her lust for Hutch to bed, literally. But neither Cole nor Katie can come clean about their impromptu fake relationship. For lots of reasons, a few of which are to save poor, sick Rue’s heart and health from deteriorating (gotta have a sick elderly female relation in harebrained fake-dating schemes) and to save Katie’s job, as her name was on their boss, Sully’s, short-list for termination. Katie’s too good to care only about her career, however - so very Victorian, putting others ahead of herself - and goes along with Cole’s fake-dating fiasco for Rue. Thus, we’ve got ourselves a love triangle, folks. Let the fun begin.

And, it is fun. Not for the characters involved but for us, the audience. Cole and Hutch’s strained relationship, however, is surprisingly deep. Yes, they’re sad orphans - VICTORIAN NOVEL, Y’ALL - who have become kinda sad adults, but the reason for their schism goes back further than a recent misunderstanding. Center’s best work is with the family dynamic between Cole, Hutch, and Aunt Rue. As much as this novel is a love story - we know that Katie and Hutch will get their HEA - it’s also a story about family and self-love. (And not of the usual kind I write about. This book is about as spicy as porridge.) Thus, while there’s a dramatic hurricane - it’s the Keys, of course there’s a hurricane - that thrusts our heroine into the literal eye of the storm and a death-defying rescue, it’s not the action or the inevitable relationship between the leads that make an otherwise cute story something more poignant. 

Yet, as much as I appreciated the nuance in the brother’s relationship and absolutely adored the tertiary characters - aforementioned cousin Beanie, “the Gals”, Rue’s rag-tag bunch of rowdy retirees, and Sully the cougar, who’s joined Cole on his trip less to check up on Katie and more to check out Hutch - I wasn’t down with Katie’s body issues and journey of self-discovery. I know that we, as a society, certainly need to examine how we still portray women and hold them to impossible beauty standards, which, despite having come a long way since the Victorian era, are still a whisper in every girl’s ear, even in an age of body positivity. But, Katie’s own battles were so overwrought and featured so prominently that I found myself flipping through these pages to get to the parts of the story I wanted to see, namely those that featured Hutch. This felt too didactic and, in this, was maybe the most Victorian part of the book: the overt moral that doesn’t quite ring true.

That aside, I’d certainly recommend The Love Haters if you’re NOT a love hater. If not for the lovers themselves, then for Beanie and her ORANGE! pillows, which were a harbinger of the very large, loving, and colorful life that Katie carves out for herself.

Rating: 4 / 5 Swimsuit-area splinter removal sessions