Hate to Love You

A Fairview/Spruce Texas Romance

By: Daryl Banner

Narrated by: Daryl Banner

Sometimes the person you hate to love
is the one you were meant to fall for.

Liam has one goal for the summer: get through it.
Then he'll be back on campus where life makes sense.
No drama. No summer job at Gary's Grocers.
And definitely no dating.

Until he matches with a mysterious guy on a new app.
Someone funny, thoughtful, and easy to talk to.
How can sparks fly when you haven't even seen someone's face?
For the first time ever, Liam might enjoy his summer break.

Then in walks the hot new hire at the store: Teague Jenson.
The thick-headed, overly charismatic, ego-inflated "heart throb" from Liam's high school days.
The one Liam is now stuck training.
The one who seems determined to crack Liam's walls with his dopey lopsided smiles
...and the way he stands too close when asking questions.

But love follows no rulebook.
Neither does hate.

And when the lines blur between the two, Liam finds himself torn
between the anonymous intellect on the app who gets him
and the real-life disaster with a charm he can't seem to get away from.

HATE TO LOVE YOU is a standalone novella set in small-town Fairview and is part of the Spruce Texas universe. Originally included in the Heart2Heart Charity Anthology Volume 6, this version is revised and expanded by over 50% with additional chapters and a new ending, making it a fresh experience even for readers of the original. Expect enemies-to-lovers steam, adorkable rom-com vibes, and surprise cameos from the Spruce Texas Romance series.

©2025 Daryl Banner (P)2025 Daryl Banner

A Horse and iIts Water

I'm going to keep this pretty short. I think this story suffers from how short it is. but more so I think it suffers from having aspects of the main series shoehorned into it. I really did feel like Liam was a horse being led to water The entire time I read. Some of the characters feel like their characterized based on the way you're supposed to think of them but then act in contradicting ways. I find Liam honestly so hard to root for. I also think that the transition from a previous novella into this isn't exactly smooth, there are some details that aren't quite polished and it's very obvious. Overall, kind of fun, kind of infuriating.

Another one from Spruce / Fairview

i always look forward to Daryl’s books, especially Spruce or Spruce spinoff ones. Overall i liked the story, even if it’s a bit juvenile. That’s ok but what i don’t like about most of Daryl’s audiobooks are the once that he narrates. In this story it was very distracting and even when Daryl tried to change his voice, every character sounded the same, like femboys. Femboy senior citizen manager, femboy women, femboy men, femboy coworkers and the main characters sounded like femboys.i don’t have an issue with femboys, they are cute, but every character???? It wasn’t believable. Just wasn’t enjoyable for that reason.