Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

First, thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC ebook of this new novel, soon to be published on May 20, 2025. For Katherine Center fans everywhere, I am sure this will be another smash hit!

This is my third book by Katherine Center, who by her own admission is a writer of love stories. Apparently, once her latest novel hits the publication and marketing arena, she goes on Goodreads and writes her very own book review, giving herself FIVE shiny stars. Well, I love that. She says in her review of The Love Haters that she has read it more than anyone and knows it better than anyone, so why shouldn’t she be the first to review it, and to give it FIVE shiny stars!

Another thing I love about Katherine Center: she seems like a very normal, down-to-earth person, like someone you might pass in the aisle at the grocery store while she is debating which pasta shape to buy for that night’s dinner. In a profile of her that I read, she said that her novels have a very low spice count because…get this…her husband teaches middle school math and he just doesn’t need middle schoolers reading spicy stuff that his wife has written. As a retired middle school teacher (albeit English), believe me, middle schoolers do not need any encouragement in the spice department! They have been raised on the internet, after all.

As I wrote in a previous book review, a former colleague told me I just had to read the Katherine Center novel she had just finished. She was a huge fan, so I read Hello Stranger, and yes, I did love it. I then followed up with The Rom-Commers, and I loved that one even more. Both of those books got FIVE shiny stars from me. So, I am sure you’d like to know, where do I stand on this one, The Love Haters?

There’s a lot to love in The Love Haters. Katie, the main character, is good at her job, but her job is in jeopardy nonetheless. I’ve been there. In a former career, I was a commercial real estate paralegal. And, I was very good at my job. But, when a massive layoff was being planned, and I was the last person hired in the legal department at my salary level, well, I was captured in the layoff net and sent away with my box of stuff from my desk. You know, just like in the movies. A coffee mug, framed pictures of family, little tchotchkes, a plant, etc. Yep, it really does happen like that. Fill up your box, drop off your badge at HR, and just walk on out the door. That was such a horrible day. The icing on the cake? On that same day, THAT SAME DAY, my husband’s car was stolen. Yep. What. A. Day.

In this book, Katie is fearful of being caught in that net, so she agrees to something that she is even more fearful of, producing and filming a promotional video for the US Coast Guard, where she will have to take a test before she can be permitted to board the Coast Guard helicopter, which she calls a “chopper,” and is quickly corrected that they are referred to as “birds.” She has a lot to learn. And first and foremost, she has to learn to swim. The test, of course, involves her swimming her way out of an upside down helicopter.

The set up of this entire story depends upon the fact that Katie can’t swim. Katie, born and raised in land-locked Dallas, Texas, can’t swim. She is terrified of the water, and even worse, she is terrified of being seen in a bathing suit.

So, yeah, here’s another place where I can totally identify with the main character. For most of my life I have been terrified of being seen in a bathing suit. Even though I was a lifeguard in high school. Even though the first thing I pack when going on vacation is a swimsuit. Even though I joined a gym last summer JUST FOR THE INDOOR SWIMMING POOL. It’s a weight thing. It’s a body image thing. I totally get it why this whole assignment is so challenging for Katie. But, she wants to keep her job, so she agrees.

In Hello Stranger I learned all about prosopagnosia, which is commonly referred to as face blindness, and about the life of a portrait artist. I had never heard of that particular condition, and that aspect of the book was fascinating to me. In The Rom-Commers, I learned all about traumatic brain injury and the world of screenwriting. This is something else I really enjoy in Katherine Center’s novels, I learn something in each one, even while basically just reading a love story that feels like a beach read but in reality is a bit deeper.

In this book, I learned a whole lot about the US Coast Guard and their uber-trained rescue swimmers, which is highlighted by the fact that the love interest in this book is exactly that: a US Coast Guard rescue swimmer, and he is the subject of the video she is to film. Center throws in other facts as well, the wind speed of the different categories of hurricanes, the names of other items related to the Coast Guard, like fins instead of flippers, and the meaning of the term BINGO, which Katie learns the hard way.

Another endearing part of this novel is the character (yes, character) named George Bailey, who is an enormous Great Dane, a rescue from a puppy mill, owned by the rescue swimmer, Hutch, who he himself had to be rescued at a very early age. George Bailey really adds a whole other level to the love of this love story.

As for the battle with the bathing suit that Katie has to fight, well, we’ve all been there, right? Katie’s “armor” as she calls her black t-shirt and black jeans is her own personal safety net, which she must trade in for a bathing suit to accomplish all the goals for this assignment. I don’t think it is a huge spoiler to say that in the end, Katie does make peace with her body, she does improve her body image, and the challenges she faces throughout the novel help her to appreciate her body and what it has done for her. Not typical chick lit at all.

So, you might ask, why does this book get FOUR shiny stars instead of the FIVE I’ve given to the other two Center novels I’ve read? I don’t really know the answer to that. It just didn’t hit me the same way. Did I enjoy it? Yes. I flew through it in about two days. Did I learn things? Yes. Did I like Katie and her path to a better relationship with her body and her body image? YES. Maybe I need to take a Katherine Center break. Maybe it is as simple as that. It could also be a factor of reading The Happy Catastrophe just before it. Maybe not two love stories in a row, even though they both had a certain gravitas to them. Still, FOUR shiny stars is a good thing, right?

So, bottom line, in May, go read The Love Haters, and see where Katie’s journey to Key West, Florida, really takes her. I know you will enjoy it.