Things We Never Got Over

I promised myself to do away with enemies-to-lovers type of books but I found myself drawn back to it due to the amount of positive reviews I found about this particular one. In all honesty, it took me a while to get into the story, but here is what I think of this novel.

"Things We Never Got Over" is an enemies-to-lovers romance novel about Naomi and Knox.
Naomi, is a runaway bride, who winds up in Knockemout, Virginia, a rough-around-the-edges town, when her twin sister, Tina who is known for mischief and causing actual problems, summons her to bail her out of trouble.

Naomi, who is a total polar opposite of her twin, finds herself running to the rescue of Tina, when she discovers that her mischievous twin hasn't changed one bit.
Tina cunningly helps herself to Naomi's car and cash, and it is too late before Naomi realizes that Tina did not only steal her car, but left her with an unexpected job; being a babysitter.
Naomi has to babysit the niece she never knew she had, and is stuck in an unknown town, with no car, no cash, no job, and an 11 year old to cater for.
That is until she meets Knox, a supposed bearded bad-boy barber, whose character, to me is as uninteresting as his love for coffee.

Quite frankly, I had little to no high expectations for this book after reading the first chapter.
On one hand, I desperately wanted this book to prove the positive critics right, and on the other hand, I am particularly careful, when too many people think too highly of a romance novel, because I've been disappointed many times over, when I eventually read whatever book it is.

However, there were some things that did not sit quite right with me.
One of them is the characterization.
Asides the fact that there is little to no character development of some of the characters in this book, I found most of the characters unlikeable.

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One of those characters would be Knox. The author tried to make an introduction of Knox as someone who is hot, and worth drooling over, but immediately made a dent on his character as a loud mouthed, rude, braggadocious and violent character.

In the first part of the book, we are introduced to Knox yelling in Naomi's face, with an assumption that she is Tina. Without giving her a chance to explain, he almost became violent with her, until he learned she wasn't Tina, and even at that refused to apologize.
Knox's propensity to violence towards Naomi would be excused at first, as a case of mistaken identity if he wasn't like that throughout half of the novel.
From dragging her about, to continuously disregarding her, to yelling at her, and talking rudely about her, just showed that Knox wasn't fit to be the protagonist of this novel.

Let's not even talk about the fact that he is self-sabotaging most times, and too demanding on Naomi.
I mean, who lifts up a woman he is supposed to be in love with, smack her about, just to prove some sort of superiority.

I apologize, but if that is the current representation of a romance novel protagonist, especially with an enemies-to-lovers plot, I'll kindly pass.

However, there were other characters I found quite adorable in this book. One of them was Naomi.
She has always been the good twin, and didn't think twice when her sister called her to come to her rescue.
Although she might have been running from issues of her own, she immediately takes responsibility of her niece that has been abandoned, and tries for find a way for both of them.
I adored Waylay, Naomi's niece. She was a very smart kid, and deserved much better than Tina as a mother.

Honestly, I have mixed feelings on what my thoughts on this entire book are.
Asides from the portrayal of toxic masculinity by Knox, I enjoyed other parts of this book.

In romance novel, you usually want the female character to end up with the male protagonist, but I am strongly against Naomi ending up with Knox.
There is a difference between grumpy main character and toxic main character, and sadly Knox was a toxic male character, who did not deserve Naomi and Waylay.

Do I recommend this book? I would say it was readable, but I didn't experience what I would have wanted to literally from reading this book.
I might check out other books by the author, before finally drawing my conclusions about her works, but "Things We Never Got Over" didn't quite meet the mark of my favorite enemies-to-lovers romance trope.