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Love at First Hate (Porthkennack Book 11) by [JL Merrow]

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JL Merrow

Love at First Hate (Porthkennack Book 11) Kindle Edition

by JL Merrow (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

43 ratings

Book 11 of 11: Porthkennack

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The Porthkennack stories can be enjoyed in any order — jump in wherever you'd like!

First impressions can doom second chances.

Bran Roscarrock has been living in the closet all his life. As heir to an expansive family legacy in the town of Porthkennack, old-fashioned ideals of respectability and duty were drummed into him since childhood, and he’s never dared to live — or love — openly.

Sam Ferreira, an old friend of Bran’s brother, Jory, is a disgraced academic desperate to leave his dead-end job. When Jory asks him to take over as curator of a planned exhibition on Edward of Woodstock, the fourteenth-century Black Prince, Sam leaps at the chance to do what he loves and make a fresh start.

But Bran’s funding the exhibition, and though sparks fly between the two men, they’re not all happy ones. Bran idolises Prince Edward as a hero, while Sam’s determined to present a balanced picture. With neither of them prepared to give ground, a hundred years of war seems all too possible. And if Bran finds out about Sam’s past, his future may not be bright, and their budding romance may be lost to history.

Word count: 86,000; page count: 325

Book 11 of 11

Porthkennack
Print length

308 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

September 3, 2018
File size

2592 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

The writing is superb, the characters are memorable (two characters who found redemption after being some of the least liked people going), history made lively, vivid, and incredibly important in how its presented, and a whole HEA that made my heart sing - Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words
Love at First Hate is a story of two men whose lives are a mess but in different ways. One is a victim of love and trust, the other of birth, expectation, and circumstance...It's about confrontation, introspection, comparison with historical figures, hiding oneself, and challenging choices...I couldn't stop turning the page - Taylin, Love Bytes Reviews

A great enemies-to-lovers story, this truly was first hate before the two decided to compromise and get to know one another. After that, the sparks were flying for a different reason... I highly recommend this series, and most definitely this story - Barb, Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words

I've read a few of the Porthkennack stories, and they are all entertaining. This is a great addition to Jory and Mal's One Under" and Devan and Kyle's Wake Up Call. JL Merrow's writing style has an easy flow, with lots of emotion to draw your interest - Maryann, The Novel Approach

[Love at First Hate is] about Branok (Bran) who was a real git in the first two books, and whom I'd basically written off as a jerk not worth my time...Boy, was I wrong - Sandra, My Fiction Nook

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07GYM7L56
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riptide Publishing (September 3, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 3, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2592 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 308 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #862,316 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #10,734 in Multicultural & Interracial Romance
- #14,093 in Multicultural Romances
- #18,036 in Gay Romance

Customer Reviews:
43 ratings

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JL Merrow

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JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea. She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again.

She writes (mostly) contemporary gay romance and mysteries, and is frequently accused of humour. Her novel Slam! won the 2013 Rainbow Award for Best LGBT Romantic Comedy, and several of her books have been EPIC Awards finalists, including Muscling Through, Relief Valve (the Plumber’s Mate Mysteries) and To Love a Traitor.

JL Merrow is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Verulam Writers and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.

Find JL Merrow online at: https://jlmerrow.com/, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

43 global ratings

5 star		42%
4 star		43%
3 star		9%
2 star		6%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Justanotherreview

A good story centered around Bran

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 1, 2018

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This is the best of JL Merrow’s Porthkennack books. Bran and Bea, who have been slightly malevolent specters until now, are fleshed out. We knew about Bea’s teenage pregnancy and the son she gave up for adoption. Here, in flashbacks, Bran’s reaction to the events is described poignantly. The full story on Bran and Beas’ father’s death is revealed, as Bran finally tells Bea what he knows.

Bran’s relationship with Jory’s son, Gawan, is the only healthy relationship Bran has going into this book. By the end, he rights his relationships with Bea and Jory, although he will likely never be close with them. The romance between Bran and Sam expands Bran’s entire worldview.

For me, Bran’s journey is the more interesting story. Sam overcomes things but Sam’s challenges seemed easy to resolve. The problems would not be so easy in real life so they became a plot device. I didn’t begrudge the plot device because they present more catalysts for change in Bran.

The rough spot is Bea. There are hints of an eating disorder. She wants to leave town. Nothing ever comes of those facts.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 22, 2019

Verified Purchase

I love JL Merrow and have read plenty of her books. I've even read other books set in the Porthkennack universe. But this book didn't work for me. I liked both MC's - though Sam was easier to like. I believed in their struggles. I just didn't believe in their connection. I never felt their antagonism was all that awful and I didn't feel them falling in love. Not believing that, all the actions that followed didn't really stack up for me. So this is a rare miss from JL Merrow for me. I will still buy more of her books!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 9, 2019

Verified Purchase

Characters that are perfectly imperfect, but learn to bend and fall in love. Well worth my time.

Helpful

Jeannie Zelos

fabulous plot(s) but somewhat understated on the romance side

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 4, 2018

Love at First Hate J.L. Merrow

Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews

Genre: Romance, LGBTQIA

Porthkennack and Garret Leigh - real treat to read.
Like the Bluewater Bay series, also from Riptide, Porthkennack covers books written by different authors about the same place.
For me it means even when books are approaching double figures they still retain that freshness first books in a series have, as each author puts their own ideas and spin to the stories.

I didn't connect this book with Wake-Up Call at first, Dev and his story rang a bell when it was mentioned, and I had to flick back and look it up. Its really interesting to see it from the other side, and I understood so much more about bran's awful reaction to Dev in that book.

I felt for Bran here, he'd had a tough upbringing, just duty, duty, duty really, and he comes over as quite aggressive almost, very taciturn, and not an easy man to get along with. Yet when we learn more of him I felt I understood him, and that the front he presented too often was just that, almost as if that he makes himself dislikeable then he's controlling others reactions, not them disliking him when he's trying to be nice, but in an almost unconscious way. Well, that's how I see him, garbled though that explantation is...
The plots were as always very intriguing and multi layered. The romance though, well, here it fell short for me. Bran and Sam don't even meet til a good way into the book, and its as the title says, hate at first sight, and second and third. Slowly though that changes, but I found the slip from dislike to lets get together didn't really give me the feelings they were invested in more, they could have just been a one night hook up, and then suddenly there's indications for a future...possibly...maybe...when the stars align, then a big blow-up and its all off.
They do get past that and have a possibly HFN but I didn't ever get that sense of passion, of emotions other than lust, and I needed that for the five.

Stars: four, fabulous plot(s) but somewhat understated on the romance side

ARC supplied by Netgalley and Publishers

Helpful

Ulysses Grant Dietz

A Jane Austen-type romance in a thoroughly modern British setting

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 20, 2018

Set once more in the fictitious Cornish town of Porthkennack, it is in this appealing series-within-a-series that J.L. Merrow focuses on the Roscarrock family and their sometimes-stormy relationship with the town itself. All of the authors who have taken on the Porthkennack setting for their books use its history and quirky Cornish culture as the framework for their narratives. Merrow zeroes in on issues of class and race in a modern UK.

It was fated that this would be my favorite of this series so far: it has a great old house, a museum, and a gay curator – all things that are central motifs in my own writing. Amazingly, Merrow actually gets the curatorial part right, something most novelists and screenwriters never do. Well done.

Branok Roscarrock has only figured lightly in previous novels in this series, and not in a good way. Literally the lord of the manor, Bran is seen as gruff, arrogant and lacking in compassion by the townsfolk. Having successfully maintained the family fortunes, he is not widely liked. His twin sister Bea hasn’t fared much better. In “Love at First Hate” we finally learn the full backstory to the Roscarrock twins.

Alessandro (Sam) Ferreira is a great character. A PhD in history, he is from a long line of Indian Catholics from the island of Goa – a Portuguese colony dating back centuries. He represents exactly the kind of British citizen that Bran Roscarrock’s father disdained: the non-white, non-Anglican child of immigrants. We even get a glimpse at the profound cultural sensitivity to accents that defines the tenacious British class system:

“His accent was southern English, working class, although educated.”

Lord knows, Americans set a great store by accents, but nowhere near the way that speech patterns mark people in the UK, even in these modern, diversified times.

Sam gets called in as a last-minute curator for a new local history center by his friend Jory – who happens to be both gay and Bran Roscarrock’s brother. Jory’s adolescent son Gawen is the heir apparent to the Roscarrock legacy (Jory’s story was the subject of a previous book in this series). Gawen’s close relationship with his uncle Bran is the first indication that Bran is something better than we have been led to believe. As it transpires, it is Bran’s foundation that is funding the new museum, and Bran’s own passion for English history that inspired it in the first place.

His first meeting with Sam Ferreira is explosive – the aristocrat’s view of history versus the immigrant’s (and, to be honest, the modern curator’s mandate to present history in a balanced and thoughtful fashion in spite of pressure from rich patrons – which is one of the things Merrow gets so right). Bran’s immediate love/hate response to Sam has its own fraught roots in Bran and Bea Roscarrock’s upbringing and unhappy adolescence. It is a classic romantic set-up that Merrow manages very neatly, mixed in with anxieties around class and race and sexuality.

Merrow writes marvelous characters. She digs under the surface to find the best of human nature that society has done its best to suppress. There is a good bit of Jane Austen in these Porthkennack stories, but reflecting a world that Austen herself could never have imagined.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Charles Hall

4.5 Stars - Great conclusion to this Arc

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 10, 2018

Verified Purchase

Ms. Merrow's third book in the Porthkennack series is the best one yet. Bran has been the villain you hate In the first two books; however, here he comes to life. In the earlier books he seems almost a cardboard bad character with no dimension. Here, you hear his thoughts, motivations and reasons. Yes he has done some less than stellar things, but there are reasons why his actions may not be that horrible. I loved learning about and finding I cared for Bran. Sam is a much easier person to like although he is also not perfect. All in all, this is the best of the three books the author has done in the series, although you really do have to read the other two to really grasp what Ms. Merrow has done here with Bran and to fully get the storyline. I only knocked a half star off as the relationship is slow to start and then seems to accelerate too rapidly over a night. All in all though, a must read if you read the previous two books.

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