Hilarious Breakup Antics | You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle

Title: You Deserve Each Other
Author: Sarah Hogle
Published: April 7, 2020
Genre(s): Romance: Contemporary
Page Count: 357
Rating:

Summary from Goodreads:

Naomi Westfield has the perfect fiancé: Nicholas Rose holds doors open for her, remembers her restaurant orders, and comes from the kind of upstanding society family any bride would love to be a part of. They never fight. They're preparing for their lavish wedding that's three months away. And she is miserably and utterly sick of him.

Naomi wants out, but there's a catch: whoever ends the engagement will have to foot the nonrefundable wedding bill. When Naomi discovers that Nicholas, too, has been feigning contentment, the two of them go head-to-head in a battle of pranks, sabotage, and all-out emotional warfare.

But with the countdown looming to the wedding that may or may not come to pass, Naomi finds her resolve slipping. Because now that they have nothing to lose, they're finally being themselves—and having fun with the last person they expect: each other.

Naomi Westfield loves her fiancé, Nicholas, about 40%. She thinks. At one point, she probably loved him 100%, but that’s long past. Getting engaged six hours before moving in together was not her best decision. Most days, she doesn’t even remember what it is she liked about the man in the first place. Past-Naomi was clearly deluded. Nicholas is a pretentious snob with an outrageous, boundary-crossing mother from hell, and he makes her miserable.

Okay…so maybe she only loves Nicholas 10%. And that number is falling fast. But Naomi isn’t going to give Nicholas the satisfaction of breaking off the engagement. Nope! She’s going to make his life just as miserable as he’s made hers, so he can try that on for size.

Except…hmm. Maybe Past-Naomi wasn’t that deluded after all?

What a book! You Deserve Each Other is a pure delight from the prologue to The End. This book combines the very best of the enemies to lovers, second chance love, and forced proximity tropes, and with extra flair. Now that I’m an Adult, I rarely stay up past 10:00, but I gulped this book down under the covers until nearly dawn. No regrets.

You Deserve Each Other does so many things right, but absolutely it succeeds most with Naomi, who narrates the entire story in first person. Sarah Hogle is a master here, creating a three-dimensional character whose voice rings out clearly in just a few paragraphs. Naomi reads like a relatable, Very Online millennial, and her cultural references were on-point and timely. I could very much picture following Naomi on Twitter and following her quirky, self-deprecating adventures via my phone. What I’m saying is: unlike some authors, Hogle absolutely gets Millennial sense of humor and just…the entire vibe of our generation.

The narration’s distinctive humor is also especially important, because otherwise I think the book would have gotten too dark. Over 50% of the book is about two people trying to make each other as miserable as humanly possible, and without Naomi to crack a joke every now and then, the story wouldn’t have worked. The prank war Naomi and Nicholas are engaged in may seem silly at first, but behind their antics are mountains of unspoken anger and hurt and miscommunication. It’s very clear that these people are both deeply unhappy with their relationship, and it’s also clear that (as with just about anything in life), the blame can be split evenly on both sides. Which is another thing I loved about You Deserve Each Other.

Obviously, I personally disagree with this book’s negative reviews (this being a 5-star read for me), but where I really disagree is all of the hate that Naomi gets. It is absolutely true that she acts like a brat during the first half of this book. And no, behaving in that way is never justified, but also? Monogamy is a difficult, confusing isolated world shared two people and—even if everyone does their best 24 hours a day—it hurts a lot. And realistically, nobody does their best every single moment of the day. So much of this book results from Naomi and Nicholas’s crappy communication, which is completely true to life. Like the old saying goes: that fight you have about unloading the dishwasher? It’s never actually about the dishwasher.

What I’m saying is: cut Naomi some slack! She’s a low-paid retail employee with no college degree engaged to a fancypants dentist with a demon mother straight out of Reddit’s r/JustNoMIL and no family of her own. She feels inadequate and invisible. She feels misunderstood. She reacts to this miserable situation by lashing out and hurting Nicholas because it takes her mind off of how much pain she’s in as well. It’s a completely realistic narrative, and I am absolutely Team Naomi. She’s a mess, but people are allowed to be messy.

Could she have talked to Nicholas about her feelings instead of supergluing his shoelaces together? Sure. But talking is really fucking hard sometimes, so I get why she opted to stick his hand in a bowl of warm water while he slept instead.

And honestly? Nicholas also did some pretty messed up stuff as well. Nobody escapes this smelling like a rose.

(And to the incredulous reviewers asking “are real couples ever this dysfunctional?” LOL. Yes.)

Obviously, Hogle makes sure that her main characters do talk to each other eventually. The gradual de-escalation of Prank Wars 2020 into peaceful domesticity was beautifully written. There is no big moment when Nicholas and Naomi “snap out of it” and fall back in love. Instead, it’s a gradual change led by small gestures—buying each other cold medicine, leaving silly notes for each other to find, actually listening to each other talk about hobbies and passions, supporting each other after a bad day. Successful relationships are usually less about the big, zoomy feelings and more about two people being willing to show up and do the work, even if the other person is being a hideous troll for no good reason.

You Deserve Each Other is a seriously funny, quirky story about two dysfunctional idiots engaged in a contest of wills that turns into them falling back in love with each other. It’s also a book with a lot of heart. Sarah Hogle’s prose is light and attention-grabbing, her mastery over her characters is complete. This book is delightful and oh so satisfying. I really, really loved it.