The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy

by Brigitte Knightley

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 384
Series: Dearly Beloathed #1
Rating:

Synopsis:

A slow burn, enemies-to-lovers romantasy featuring a scholarly healer and a gentleman assassin, set in an exquisite fantasy world, perfect for fans of The Love Hypothesis and Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries.

Osric Mordaunt, member of the Fyren Order of assassins, is in dire need of healing. Naturally – such is the grim comedy of fate – the only healer who can help is Aurienne Fairhrim, preeminent scientist, bastion of moral good, and member of an enemy Order. Aurienne is desperate for funding to heal the sick - so desperate that, when Osric bribes her to help him, she accepts, even if she detests him and everything he stands for.

A forced collaboration ensues: the brilliant Woman in STEM is coerced into working with the PhD in Murders, much to Aurienne's disgust. As Osric and Aurienne work together to heal his illness and investigate the mysterious reoccurrence of a deadly pox, they find themselves ardently denying their attraction, which only fuels the heat between them.

The main problem for me with Brigitte Knightley’s The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy was that the characters were both insufferable. This would make absolute sense if it were only when we’re in one POV talking about the other, but one of Aurienne’s early chapters just made her sound like she was completely up herself:

It was hard, being perfect in an imperfect world, but Aurienne managed. If she had a flaw, it was that she was the Best, and she knew she was the Best. Some called it arrogance. She called it competence untainted by performative humility. But if she was the Best — as brilliant as she was beautiful, a researcher unparalleled, a daughter beloved, a lover sometimes (did anyone truly deserve her? Frankly, no) — why, pray, had she just been asked to care for the Worst? Tasked to heal [an assassin], of all the foul things in the world?

Frankly, she can go off and fuck herself, since she thinks she’s the only one who’s worthy.

Mostly in a romance, you expect some ability to actually like the characters. And also some chemistry between the two would be nice. Unfortunately, they’re both awful, and the chemistry between them isn’t great. That they dislike each other, I can believe; that that turns to attraction/love, I can’t, particularly as those sections go all purple prose (in comparison to the quippy banter of the rest of the thing).

You’d think I had absolutely no fun at all with that lead-in, but the weird thing is that I did have fun with it. I don’t know if I’ll read the next book, but I finished this one pretty quickly! It was fun in a trashy way (which I say because most people know what I mean by “trashy” and not actually as a value judgement on “trashy” books which can be deeply enjoyable), and I can kinda understand why some people adore it. It feels like a fanfic, for the very good reason that it was.

On which note, I will warn as well that the veneer is very thin at times. Harry Potter lingers on it like a bad smell. Not all of us pickled ourselves in that fandom, but there’s stuff even I realised was mostly find-and-replace (deofols = owls, for instance). If you don’t like accidentally finding yourself perpetuating the worship of a series written by a transphobe who uses her platform to try to hurt as many trans people as she can, children included — well. Now you’re warned!

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)