A while ago, I reviewed Penelope Douglas' Bully and it generated a wonderful conversation about books featuring the bully-to-lovers trope. I mentioned that I had started Never Sweeter and originally DNF’d it, but I was inspired to give it another go to see if author Charlotte Stein managed to write a successful bully redemption story. Sadly, she did not. She did, however, write a book with more bodily fluids in it than I thought possible and some of the weirdest conversations I’ve ever read.

Juliet ‘Letty’ Carmichael has always been bullied by her classmates, but the worst actors are Tate Sullivan and his wrestling friend-bros Jason and Patrick. Things come to a head the night the boys, with Jason driving and the other two riding along, intentionally hit Letty with their truck as she walks along a road, knocking the girl off a literal cliff. She suffers a severe head injury so bad it delays her entry into college by a full two years.

I’m going to come to a halt here to say that this scenario, in which these boys actually attempt to murder Letty, pretty much determined that the so-called hero would be irredeemable. But I kept reading because… yeah, I don’t know.

Anyway. Letty finally makes it to college where she runs head first into Tate, a fellow student in her film studies class. Her horror at seeing her high school tormentor is immediate and visceral. But since she can’t exactly leave, she determines to ignore him. This is made impossible when Tate and Letty are partnered together to work on a project about sex in cinema. Letty goes to the professor to explain why this is simply impossible, but Tate intercepts her and talks her out of it. Weirdest of all, she agrees to be his partner instead of telling him to go straight to hell, Do Not Pass Go.

Tate and Letty work together, he drops enough remarks to indicate that he feels really bad about what he’d done to her back in high school, and she forgives him really quickly and then they start fooling around, inspired by all of the sexy movies they have to watch for their project. Things progress until the inevitable, when Letty discovers evidence that makes it look like Tate is still messing with her head. When confronted, Tate can’t manage to explain how what Letty found is, in fact, innocent, and so Letty refuses to interact with him ever again.

Until she learns that Tate really does love her, and it’s actually all her fault that he tormented her and he was, in fact, a hero because he called 911 the night of her accident and didn’t really want Jason to run her over with his truck (although he refused to rat Jason out when the cops showed up and Jason claimed it to be a horrible accident). Because that’s just how messed up this book is.

The good: Letty’s dorm friend Lydia who names Tate for the evil bully that he was, calls out that what those boys did was attempted murder, and questions Lettie’s evolving feelings for the guy. Until the end when Lydia falls into a mushy puddle of Tate worship.

I give Stein credit for presenting a former bully who does legitimately seem sorry for what he’s done, at least a lot more than the other bully ‘heroes’ I’ve encountered. But the problem is that Tate’s remorse is often inconsistent. He spews things like this:

“I…damn it, all right. But that was years ago; you can’t hold something against me I did as a kid.”

And:

“Shit that I probably did do once without, like, being aware of it.”

Which doesn’t really sound like ownership. Too, Tate never actually apologizes. He never says the words ‘I am sorry for bullying you. I am sorry for trying to hurt you. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.’ He just drops a lot of self-deprecating nonsense that Letty laps up like drops of water in the desert. When we finally do get indications that Tate had been wracked with guilt and self-loathing, it’s not in a way that would have meant anything to Letty when she really needed it.

And in the end, when we are fed some BS reason why this all had been, after all, Letty’s doing, you really can’t call this any kind of redemption story. Yes, Tate was wrong to bully Letty, but He Had Reasons.

And Letty’s forgiveness happens way too fast and easily. By page 27 Tate is calling her “honey” with no pushback on Letty’s part. By page 35 Tate thinks they are “almost cool” and, indeed, by page 47 Letty states that they are legit friends. And once the sex starts half way through the book, it simply does not stop until it’s time for the misunderstandings. I hate dirty talk so much… this was pure torture for me with all of the jets of liquid and soaked panties.

Tate and Letty engage in a lot of what is supposed to be funny banter but that is more straight up cringe. Stein rarely uses dialogue tags, so even when there are only two people talking, I often got confused.

This has to be the funniest and most absurd bit of conversation I’ve ever read

[Tate speaking] “She ran out on me because I have a can of Pringles in my pants.”

[Letty] “Well, what the hell were you doing keeping them there?”

“No, Letty. No, honey. Not literally Pringles.”

There was a pregnant pause after that…

“Did you seriously just tell me that your dick is enormous?”

“That may possibly have been the gist of my point.”

Later followed by what has to be the grossest thing I’ve ever read in my entire life, which occurs when Tate has prepared a surprise picnic for Letty in the loft of an abandoned, spooky barn:

[Letty] “I believe you are a huge jackass, that’s what I believe. How are we supposed to make out if I poop my pants? Tell me that, Tate. Tell me what the plan was then.”

"Baby, I would still totally tongue you if you messed yourself.”

“That is the least romantic while still being the sexiest thing I ever heard.”

OMG! So gross!

Some things I don’t even know how to interpret, such as:

“...Tate Sullivan, the guy who’d once made her attempt to cut off her love handles with a pair of scissors.”

Is she speaking metaphorically or literally?!

And this is just straight up tasteless:

“[Letty] did in fact feel more comfortable about being close to him. How could she not, after spending an hour play-wrestling with him in the goofiest way she could imagine? Hitler would probably seem like a great guy to hang out with, after that.”

I can’t even measure the tonnage of NO on that.

In the end, I’m left still wondering if it’s possible to write a bully-to-lovers story that works. After reading the head-spinning nonsense that is Never Sweeter, I have my doubts.