What a hot mess.

In Foes & Cons, Carrie Aarons manages to do the enemies-to-lovers/bully romance trope wrong in every possible way.

Blair Oden and Sawyer Roarke grew up together, best friends, and the summer before sophomore year, potential love interests. At least until Blair found a Pros/Cons list Sawyer wrote with reasons to date Blair and reasons to friend-zone Blair. Hurt that the guy she thought she could trust most in the world would be so cruel and superficial, she publicly humiliates him during a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven, launching a cold war that has taken them to senior year.

But after a summer spent volunteering in Haiti, Blair has returned with more confidence and a hot body. She’s determined to enjoy her last year of high school and to hold her own against Sawyer, meeting him meanness for meanness. 

Sawyer has no idea why Blair publicly humiliated him two years earlier. He’s tried to ask her why she did it, but instead of telling him she’d found his list and letting him explain or apologize, she lashed out. I can sum up the problem of this whole book with one excerpt: 

“Nate’s [Blair’s gay bestie] expression is growing more concerned, more suspicious. ‘But Sawyer has no idea why you’re really furious at him? He hasn’t all this time? So you just bulldozed him at that party sophomore year and all of this back and forth pissing contest has been because he has no clue why you murdered your friendship?’”

This is enemies-to-lovers based on a Big Misunderstanding. Maybe worse is that Blair knows that she’s wrong for this:

“It strikes me now that Sawyer thought I ended our friendship randomly, out of the blue. It is, now that I think of it, pretty unfair that he has just been left hanging with no excuse or reason from me.”

For this reason, the girl lost any sympathy I might have had for her.

Things look even worse for Blair because we get to see, through Sawyer’s PoV, how confused and hurt he’d been when she spontaneously rejected him for seemingly no reason. His feelings for her had been growing and he’d wanted to explore them and tell her how he felt, but she basically spat in his face. While Sawyer is an insufferable douchebag, I at least get where he’s coming from.

Although I never did understand why Blair would even want a guy who thinks like this:

“Truth is, I have no desire to take a date to homecoming. I’m an eighteen-year-old male, there is no way I’m tying myself to one girl when I can swap grinding partners the entire night. Hailey isn’t my girlfriend, I’m not shelling out for flowers, and I’m not ending the night with some promise of more in our future.”

When Sawyer seems torn between his mixed emotions, it’s not because he hates Blair and also loves her; it’s because he hates Blair and he also wants to fuck her. Maybe the best part (or only good part) of this book is when Sawyer’s friends start pushing back against his decree that they are not allowed to pursue Blair because 1) he wants to deny Blair a romantic partner and 2) he loves Blair and doesn’t want anyone else to have her. But that’s not exactly what goes through his brain.

“I’m too busy trying to clock my best friend in the jaw for saying that he’s trying to fuck the girl I both simultaneously hate and want beneath me, moaning my name.”

Sawyer admits, at least to himself, that the only reason he is making Blair’s life a living hell is because he’s a petty little shit.

“They all think that… the reason I made Blair persona non grata… was because she embarrassed me. And that is partially the reason. But the even bigger reason is because if she doesn’t want me, if I can’t have her, then no one can. I don’t want to see her flirting with other guys, or hear about how she was falling in love. I don’t want to turn down a hall at school and see some asshole making out with her in front of her locker.

I want her to pay for not wanting me. For purposely pushing me away.”

What a prince!

Eventually, Blair confesses to Sawyer why she cut him off so harshly. At first he’s mad that she was snooping, then he’s regretful and determined to do right by her. He apologizes. And what does Blair do? She gives him crap about how mean he’s been to her all these years and how she can’t trust him and yada yada yada. 

But this is normal for Blair. She loses her temper and says some really mean, hurtful things to Sawyer. Then, when Sawyer lashes out and embarrasses her, she gets all weepy and thinks “I thought for one short moment that Sawyer was actually turning a corner.” OMG, she brought it on herself and then has the balls to be the victim? Eye roll.

In addition to the wildly inconsistent main characters, there are some doozy story WTFs. 

For example, Blair covers Sawyer’s Jeep in tampons, even the windshield, adhering them with sticky honey. First, it would cost hundreds of bucks to buy enough tampons to cover an entire truck and hours to actually affix them, yet she manages to do it during a party. Blair muses about how much fun it was to tape the tampons on the Jeep. What happened to the honey? And Sawyer drives the thing without removing them. Okay.

Then there are dumb things:

• In chapter 1, Glavin is the soccer team goalie until chapter 4 when it’s Alton
• Sometimes Blair’s hair smells like marshmallows (ew). Sometimes it smells like clementines. I guess the girl loves a scented shampoo.
• “I highly doubt the Ivy Leagues are checking into how well I can make a homecoming nomination ballot out of felt and pipe cleaners.” Um…maybe they would be interested in why in the hell you would need felt or pipe cleaners to make a nomination ballot?
• Blair and her friend Nate have to do ALL the work for homecoming events. Don’t they have a committee? Aren’t there other students who step up? 
• Across a darkened gym dance floor, Blair can see Sawyer’s eyes change from clover-green to the hue of the sea when it rages and thrashes during a storm. Really?

You know, now that I think about it, Blair and Sawyer deserve each other. But you, dear reader, do not deserve the pain that would be reading this book.