Because You Love to Hate Me edited by Ameriie

Buy here*

Publication date: 2017
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 339
My rating: 3 stars
Ages: 16+

What is it about some villains that make them so intriguing? How did villains become villains? What is it that the villains really want? Through 13 different short stories we find the answers.

Each short story in this collection was inspired by a question asked by a book blogger, who then includes commentary after that story.

I had two favorite stories: "The Sea Witch" by Marissa Meyer, which shows how the sea witch who provides the Little Mermaid with legs came to be the sea witch. The other was "Beautiful Venom" by Cindy Pon. Pon takes the Greek myth about Medusa and transplants it into China in one of the best ways possible. I think the reason I liked both of these stories so much is that it really does show how these familiar villains became who they are. In the case of Meyer's story, the sea witch was an outcast who thought she found love only to be heartbroken. In "Beautiful Venom," Pon focused more on the part of the Medusa story that we tend to glaze over.

I was a little disappointed in some of the stories because I was expecting all of them to be like the ones I mentioned above—the origin stories of villains. Which did happen in some of the stories, but a lot of them turned the villains into heroes.

I did like the commentary from the bloggers; in fact, some times those where my favorite parts.

One of the stories does use the f-word repeatedly.

*I do not receive compensation from Amazon.