More than Meets the Eye — Mara Lovelle
5 stars
I’ll be honest: I was skeptical going in. My husband is a lawyer, so I live adjacent to the legal world, and my first thought was that a law firm romance could easily turn into a dry procedural with kissing stapled to it. It did not. Not even a little.
Baz Hadley is a workaholic attorney with his eyes locked on becoming the youngest partner at his elite Chicago law firm and absolutely zero interest in anything that might derail that goal. Then Sami Adam walks in — cocky, gorgeous, and unfortunately working for the opposing side of Baz’s most important case. Baz despises him immediately, which is of course the beginning of the end for Baz. The sparks of loathing become a secret affair that threatens everything Baz has spent years building, and Sami refuses to stay in the convenient box Baz has assigned him.
I am not the biggest enemies-to-lovers reader. When the book opened with both of them going at each other, my instinct was to brace for fifty chapters of manufactured antagonism. But Mara Lovelle burns through the enemies phase efficiently and gets to the good part — the tension, the banter, the chemistry — without camping out in hostility longer than necessary. The back-and-forth between Baz and Sami is genuinely fun. Sharp without being exhausting. They feel like two people who are good at sparring because they’re both smart, not because the plot needs them to keep fighting.
The legal setting is handled well. It’s not oversimplified for people who know nothing about law, and it’s not stuffy for people who do. The workplace stakes feel real, and the villain — yes, there is a big, cartoonishly mean one — serves his purpose. I know some readers will roll their eyes at how neatly it wraps up. Personally, I read romance to escape reality, and I want my fairytale ending delivered without apology. This book delivers it.
But the thing that really got me — and I wasn’t expecting it — is that Baz is autistic. I’m autistic myself, and representation in MM romance is still rarer than it should be. Watching a character navigate relationships, professional ambition, and deep-seated snap judgments through that lens, without it being treated as a quirk or a tragedy, was genuinely meaningful. Mara Lovelle is an AuDHD author writing from lived experience, and it shows. It’s in the texture of how Baz thinks, not just in a label on the page.
One content note for spice readers: there’s no prep in the sex scenes. If that’s not your thing, worth knowing going in. It doesn’t bother me personally, but it’s the kind of thing that takes people by surprise.
I liked this as much as Heated Rivalry, which for me is about as high a compliment as I give. Absolutely recommend.