The Love Haters by Katherine Center

It’s a thin line between love and love-hating.

Katie Vaughn has been burned by love in the past—now she may be lighting her career on fire. She has two choices: wait to get laid off from her job as a video producer or, at her coworker Cole’s request, take a career-making gig profiling Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West.

The catch? Katie’s not exactly qualified. She can’t swim—but fakes it that she can.

Plus: Cole is Hutch’s brother. And they don’t get along. Next stop: paradise!



But paradise is messier than it seems. As Katie gets entangled with Hutch (the most scientifically good looking man she has ever seen . . . but also a bit of a love hater), along with his colorful Aunt Rue and his rescue Great Dane, she gets trapped in a lie. Or two.


Swim lessons, helicopter flights, conga lines, drinking contests, hurricanes, and stolen kisses ensue—along with chances to tell the truth, to face old fears, and to be truly brave at last.

Why I Picked It Up

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I'm a simple girl. When I'm at the lake, I want sunshine and illustrated covers and a romantic plot I know will get the job done, and Katherine Center is an ol' reliable. I cracked up when I first read The Bodyguard—which reads like Miss Congeniality meets Ted Lasso—and have been faithful enough ever since. While the stories and formulas are similar, they're warm, likable, and kind. I somehow missed picking up The Love Haters when it was released, but knew it would hit the spot.

About the Book

Sure enough, Katherine Center often writes the same (or similar) character. Her novels are big on self-love, so they tend to be wholesome and sweet on the character development front—good friendships, a shaky relationship with their appearance or reputation, perhaps a refrain or fixation that keeps them anchored during the tough times. Probably something psychologically backed.

In Happiness for Beginners, that looks like learning to make gratitude lists, and signing up for a challenging hiking trip. In The Love Haters, Katie is picking up the pieces after her fiancé cheated on her, which looks like grappling with an eating disorder and learning not to pick apart her appearance alongside the tabloids. Along with her best friend, she starts naming things she likes about herself—backed by the relationship science of John M. Gottman and Julie Gottman. Like myself, Center likes to read—and write—about pop psychology.

(I read the Gottmans' work last year after a friend loved The Love Prescription, and Center absolutely feels like someone who can layer in tidbits like that without making it too awkward. The self-love journeys are always a little on the basic side, but some people need that! Her epiphanies may feel obvious.)

Katie's job is on the line, so she flies down to Key West to film a documentary project with the Coast Guard—and the hunky hero, Hutch, who happens to be her boss's estranged brother. If you like following accounts that repost people doing kind deeds and acts of service—this is the book for you. She just writes about straightforwardly good people falling for each other.

As for the plot, my focus veered some in the middle just because I have read the Katherine Center formula so many times already, but I liked the book plenty. In the last few books of hers I've devoured, the plots have a tendency to go off the deep end later, and that absolutely happened in The Love Haters.

That ending sequence? Convoluted and utterly ridiculous. I rolled my eyes from about seventy to ninety percent, with the sisters group message a-flutter (as they both read this one before me.) Katherine Center can be a little over-the-top, but The Love Haters was still a solid, memorable installment.

Overall Thoughts

The highlight of The Love Haters was its sense of place. I've been lucky to live in tropical places—Hawai'i, Florida—but the precise details that Katherine Center chose flashed me to being maybe eleven years old and sucking down a virgin piña colada after swim practice on a Friday night when our swim club did "family night" and there was someone playing the steel drums.

In other words: the Key West atmosphere was kitschy but immersive. Nowadays, my beaches of choice tend to be of the golden, rugged variety, but The Love Haters made me long for those cotton-candy cottages and white sugar sand and leathery skin and all the details that make something feel like Old Florida. It's very specific to a certain stripe of dehydration and colorful caftans and starfish decor, and I loved that in a deep childhood way.

While predictable and occasionally veering saccharine, The Love Haters knows what it's doing and makes a sweet, lovable read ideal for when you have a bad day or want to be swept out to a vacation. I always really like how genuine and kind the characters are, and for that reason, will always pick up a Katherine Center book. I didn't like the conflicts present in the second half of the book, but that's largely due to—spoiler ahead—how absolutely ridiculous the hurricane plot was. My family tends to be really critical of books that get these details wrong because it's such a big part of our lives having lived in Florida, and I also don't love super out-there absurd events within a plot. But I'm willing to let that part go. It's a cute summer read worth library-ing—or buying, if you already know you'll vibe with Katherine Center's aesthetic.