Book Review: The Hurricane Wars, by Thea Guazon
Looking at the first book of The Hurricane Wars trilogy, and a few thoughts on Romantasy
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Other analysis posts: Assassin’s Creed Mirage | Assassin’s Creed Shadows Preview Build | Murtagh: The Inheritance Cycle #5
Character: ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Plot: ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
Prose: ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Worldbuilding: ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Romance: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
OVERALL: ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Intro
I was willing to forgive this book a lot going into it. I have been a Reylo fan since The Force Awakens, and I am trying to get the hype around Romantasy; I thought that this could be a book where, if not making me into a true Romantasy believer, I could at least like it. But when I hit about the ⅓ mark where the story introduces the arranged marriage, it all started to go downhill. I had to throw in the towel. The Hurricane Wars ended up being a terrible Fantasy and an uncompelling Romance, and overall, I think this subgenre needs to take a long, hard look at itself and what it wants to do if it plans to have staying power beyond this current craze.
Characters
The characters’ lack of clear direction and development is a large source of my frustrations with this book.
One thing I will give the book props for is it has a proper enemies-to-lovers setup, and though I’m fairly neutral on enemies-to-lovers as a trope, I’m pleased to see that Talasyn and Alaric actually are enemies rather than irritated acquaintances, like so many other setups I’ve seen. That being said, I have not found many enemies-to-lovers that I actually believe. I find this a tough challenge for any writer tackling this at scale; that being, the reason the couple start off as hating each other has to do with things like … one of them is a powerful political player in a war against another nation. That’s a big barrier to overcome, and not done convincingly here.
The book’s idea of developing the characters into positions for their romance is via the very worn road of snarky banter and bickering. They bicker about being clumsy, they snark about being tall and smol, they have banter about how their dates go. Which I would not complain about if 1) this was not 90% of the flirting in Romantasy, and 2) if this was not on the scale of empires. It has the effect of making the characters unserious and ignorant, and what should have been drama about coming to terms with the fact you’re not only having to marry for duty, but have to marry someone you have tried to kill on the battlefield multiple times, is instead reduced to ice-cream dates.
Where are the feelings about that? Talasyn and Alaric both flop back-and-forth on subjects like “God, I want to stab you so bad rn”, but it crosses the point of childishness very quickly. I could have forgiven the contrived reasons for the arranged marriage if the people involved in the marriage actually tried to deal with it. I don’t know what their thoughts are on it other than them wanting to stab one another in the morning and then fawning over their hotness in the afternoon, but s/he doesn’t like me back waaaah, because that’s what the book has deemed the most important part of their characterisations here. There is no thought to the future of their nations. There is no thought as to their relationship going forward other than embarrassment about having sex. Are you not going to be thinking about what any potential children from this union will grow up to be like? What they’ll feel towards their cultures? What their parents feel about each other? Are either Alaric or Talasyn thinking long-term about their married lives and, if they are determined to keep themselves apart as much as they can, how that will impact their other relationships? Are they afraid of being lonely in their marriage? Are they thinking about having extramarital affairs to make their lives bearable? Are they concerned about how their subjects will perceive them? And, are they at all afraid about what will happen if they do find happiness together? Does the thought disgust them in the early days of the engagement? Does Talasyn go to bed at night terrified for herself? Does Alaric worry about Talasyn impacting his ability to be an emperor, both personally and politically? Is he afraid she will hurt or kill him?
I don’t know because these characters just sneak out on night market dates and think off-handed thoughts about how much they want to stab each other and how Alaric’s big hands can wrap themselves aallll the way around teenie-tiny Talasyn’s waist.
It’s this lack of believability that drove so much of my dislike for the book. They don’t act like real people grappling with real emotions or situations. Or at least, not people in these positions. They reflect more like wealthy teens and young adults dealing with the modern dating scene, but one of them is an obnoxious neighbour from down the street.
It just begs the question of why this book isn’t set in a holiday resort with like, Alaric being an arrogant rich kid and Talasyn having won tickets to the resort at a local mall, and then they lead two groups of teens in a summer war on the beachfront.
Plot
Aside from the startling lack of characterisation, the politics undid the book for me. I was able to deal with the romance (at first, more on this later). I was able to deal with the characters making questionable decisions, to put it lightly, but when it came to the meat of this premise of an arranged marriage, my patience with the book snapped. Because every. Single. Person in this book who has any access to the circles of politics, even as a simple observer, is a colossal moron to the highest of degrees.
My biggest, most grating irritation: this is the most contrived, insanely negotiated, poorly thought-out political marriage I have seen in a long time. I really hate to be that person shitting on fic culture after reading and writing so much of it growing up … but this is a reason why the Fantasy communities I know have poor expectations for fics with the serial numbers filed off.
I also found the plot to be heavily contrived and revolving around Talasyn and Alaric. One of the early incidents in the book involves these two are fighting in the newly discovered nation of Nenavar. Alaric and Talasyn are imprisoned, only for him to escape with seemingly minimal effort whilst Talasyn is being questioned. Not only does he tear his way through this prison like it’s made from wet paper, but Talasyn is able to go after him with very little effort because the guards are quite literally standing around frozen in shock. What are you doing?! You’re guards! You’re supposed to be trained against standing around in surprise!
If this was one incident where the world’s logic took a break to let Alaric and Talasyn have their dramatic showdown, I would just move on with my life. But it kept happening. Talasyn easily sneaks out of the palace whenever she pleases because the security is that lax, all the time, and she is once accompanied by Alaric and err? Why is this man trusted enough to not be watched by Nenavar extensively? Is Talasyn not valued by her people enough to be guarded both from herself and/or a potential outside threat like a stalker or an assassin? Talasyn is not told vital information by her political allies for flimsily justified reasons, all so she and Alaric have the chance to bond over her family being mean to her.
And then there’re things like, the Moonless Dark coming in less than half a year after Nenavar has known for generations it was going to come on this certain date, and there seems to be zero preparations being made by the population to do something about it. No one is panicking about it, no one is making plans for their homes and entire archipelago being destroyed for multiple generations, and everyone banking on this extremely new solution of Talasyn and Alaric’s magic is ridiculous to the point of disbelief. No one seems to care about this at an emotional, logistical level, and why??
This constant barrage of stuff just not making sense really, really wore away at me.
Prose
Holy shit, the run-on sentences. They were something else.
It was a world away from the dilapidated orphanage in Hornbill’s Head. That leaky-roofed, rammed-earth compound tucked into the slums of a drab brown city where no trees grew, with its mold-flecked straw pallets and overflowing latrines and apathetic caretakers who spent all the meager funds on women and dice and riesag, a potent cocktail of distilled barley and fermented muskox milk that was the cheapest and most effective way to stay warm on the Great Steppe.
Stop??? Please???
There are lots of other jank sentences where either flow or meaning is confused, so there were times I had to go back and re-read what I’d just read, or slow my usual pace down because sorry what? How were you sitting? I didn’t catch it the first time.
Talasyn joined him with some reluctance, dropping down across from him closer than she would have preferred due to the thick, protruding roots taking up most of the space.
The book needed more time in the prose oven fr fr, but one thing I was very happy about, and this is such a low bar I can’t quite believe I am praising this, I didn’t spot any typos! Because typos are A Problem in many, many a Romantasy I have read in the last few years.
My second issue with the prose: it was overly descriptive for no reason. Clothing, rooms, items, and objects were all described in minute detail, and this has the effect of an information overload so I, for one, have no idea what the thing looks by the end of the description. It exists in my mind as “person-shaped and teal”, or “room-shaped and gold”, etc. These descriptions are useful for a cosplayer or someone drawing fan art, but as a reader, it is useless and serves only to break the narrative flow.
There are also baffling word and description choices such as “eyes at half-mast”, or a gown of “loom-woven fabric” and it’s like ... as opposed to what? A knitted gown? Because every single textile garment in human history has either been made via knitting, or a sub-form of, or with a loom. That’s just how fabric works. This is like saying “the wooden tree”, or “the electrical lightning” because what else is it going to be?
Worldbuilding
So, the worldbuilding is a wee bit of a mess (i.e., a goddarn spaghetti splat on the wall). The first few chapters are dedicated to the long infodumps delivered in those headache-inducing run-on sentences, and I think this the consequence of two reasons.
The consequence of retooling the story from a fic to an original work, and it being easier to edit out the Star Wars world and/or add this worldbuilding in these concentrated sections at the beginning because it’s much harder to spread the information out across more pages, and,
The consequence of a lack of confidence in the work, as the book gives me the impression of wanting to establish itself as Serious Fantasy, i.e., that it doesn’t just exist for the sake of the romance (though it does), and so has a deeper world than at first blush.
I was recently at a relaunch for C. S. Pacat’s Captive Prince trilogy, another enemies-to-lovers story that I have been meaning to revisit, and one of the topics brought up was the expectations of Romance readers and Fantasy readers when engaging with Romantasy. One of the biggest reasons, it was agreed, that Fantasy readers bounce off Romantasy so much is the worldbuilding is not great. It is hard to balance good worldbuilding with Romance conventions, because you only have so much page space and the romance and worldbuilding both need large amounts of attention; typically, the romance is chosen to be developed over the world.
So what happens are things like, “why is this empire taking over everything outside of The One Reason (but it is probably revenge of some kind (which is very Iraq War, American-brained ngl))”, “why is this magic so inconsistent”, “why is no one taking advantage of this wonderous technology like they should”, “why are we in a feudal society but we have 21st century left-wing values that are fundamentally incompatible with how feudalism works”, “where are all the farmers and people feeding this beautiful, five-star resort-like city”, “why does everyone dress like they have stepped out of Pinterest”, “if this kingdom is richer than God, then where did all the wealth come from because it surely didn’t just magically appear one day 😐”, etc., etc.
The Hurricane Wars is yet another Romantasy in a long line of them which doesn’t much care to answer these questions; it’s just another Vibes Book, and like, fine. But: you’re a secondary world Fantasy book mashed with Romance. You’re building another world. Why must I keep asking for just a crumb of sense from these types of books?
Romance
I don’t like Talasyn and Alaric as a couple because they don’t compel me. I’ve mentioned a few times that I am a big Relyo fan, and I wrote myself this note when I was about halfway through the book comparing Talasyn and Alaric’s budding romance to Rey and Kylo Ren:
Reylo is so intriguing because they believe in the other’s ability to turn to their respective sides … and it being entirely possible that it goes either way; it’s a yearning for an equal in a world where they are outcast, adrift, and achingly lonely for it. There isn’t any of that here with Talasyn and Alaric — it’s just them being mad at each other (for sometimes ridiculous reasons) whilst secretly crushing on them and then being ashamed about it. Boring. Waste of time. Read in a hundred other books and fics. And when reading this through a Reylo lens, because it is sort of impossible not to when you know the backstory behind this book, it misses the point about them as a couple. So if it fails as a Relyo romance, then it had no chance as an Alaric and Talasyn one.
Talasyn and Alaric don’t have anything like that. Not necessarily in the way of, “oh, the other must conform to my POV!” like Rey and Kylo, but they lack any distinct reasons during their budding romance about why they are interested in each other beyond their star-crossed destinies and “Urgh, he/she is intriguing and cute and hot”. I ask: okay, but what else?
Why do they fucking like each other?
Romance has to have more than a surface-level attraction for an audience to be invested in them smooching — just think of the number of CW shows that are populated solely by attractive people, but still have distinct couples — which Talasyn and Alaric lack. And whilst there is some level of spark and chemistry here, it’s not nearly enough to justify Alaric’s pursuing of Talasyn, and later her pursual of him. He is not deep enough of a character, and Talasyn is close to one-note. As such, they fall into the trap of many a Romantasy couple where they are together because they are the leads.
Which leads me to talk about Romantasy as a genre, and how I think it needs to do a lot of evolving if it wants to thrive beyond its time in the sun right now.
A Quick Romantasy Tangent
Romantasy as a market is salivating for more. More romance, more spice, more pretty books for the social media clout. But the market’s rapid growth means it has been inundated by the same type of Romantasy, which I personally call The Vibes Romantasy. That kind of story is not to everyone’s tastes, and the market is reaching a point where people are figuring out what they like, want, and expect from it in the long-term, but the stories aren’t currently there.
Let me explain: most of what is being (traditionally) published now is to do with how the main couple of the book acts. You have the dark-haired, troubled-past Bad Boy (Alaric in this book is an example; others include Xaden in Fourth Wing, Rhysand in ACOTAR, Kaan from When the Moon Hatched, etc.), you have the Monster Boyfriend (Rhysand again, Raihn from The Serpent and the Wings of Night, etc.). But like … that’s kind of it. It all revolves around the type of guy the main character is falling in love with. A big appeal of the regular Romance genre is, of course, the main love interest, but Romantasy isn’t just about Romance — it’s about Fantasy. Why not take more from the Fantasy genre than secondary worlds? One of the great strengths of the Fantasy genre is its ability to explore topics that cannot be so easily explored in the real world. It allows the author and reader to dial situations up to unrealistic levels and mine drama from them. What if a succession crisis but with dragons? What if undead armies suddenly rose from the ground?
And like, what about all the male readers I see wanting to like Romantasy but can’t get their feet in because it’s mostly hetero romances from the horny female perspective? What about those who want to have a tense political drama with a strong romance like myself? There is almost nothing in the mainstream market for that (as in, I doubt I will find what I want by walking into my local bookshop not called Kushiel’s Dart), and I think … I hope, that we are approaching a splitting point in this subgenre where specific demands are starting to be met. Just like Fantasy had to adapt when people got tired of every book being a Tolkien clone in the 70s and 80s, just like how the broader Romance genre had to grow beyond Dashing Dukes and Vivacious Viscounts, Romantasy needs to grow beyond its current borders and into … something else. But what else? IDK. If I did, I would write that thing, sell 30m copies, and maybe have enough money to buy a house or something.
Final Thoughts
The Hurricane Wars isn’t a good book. Romantasy as a genre aims to balance Fantasy’s secondary worlds and Romance’s relationships, but The Hurricane Wars does neither well — the characters are subject to the vibes of a scene rather than any grounding psychology, the worldbuilding is slap-dash, last minute, and doesn’t do anything particularly interesting regarding its cultural or geographic choices, and the book repeatedly gets basic information wrong, from how dresses are made, to going about the whole arranged marriage thing like an insane goblin.
So as a Romantasy, it’s not what I’m looking for. I thought it being based off Reylo would give it an advantage because I like that so much, but that bias only got me so far. I am glad I read this because it’s helped evolve more of my thoughts on Romantasy as an emerging subgenre, but it didn’t make the moment-to-moment experiences pleasant.
Bonus: Selected Kindle Notes
Not that it’s any great mystery as to why they left this grandfather behind, Talasyn mused, watching from a dim corner of the thatched longhouse as the stooped, elderly cleric in pale yellow robes struggled to lift a large pewter goblet over the crackling fire that was reflecting off his marble-ball scalp. In reed-thin and quavering tones, he meandered haphazardly through the closing words of the marriage rite while the bride glared at him.
Holy overwritten Batman! If the whole book is like this then I am scared for my life o_O
“As chief negotiator for the Nenavar Dominion and on behalf of Her Starlit Majesty Urduja Silim, She Who Hung the Earth Upon the Waters, allow me to formally call this meeting to order. I have been instructed to proceed as if these were traditional marriage negotiations—”
“With all due respect, they are not,” said Mathire. “This is a political union between two governments, with entire armies and economies at stake. It would be a disservice to both sides—and certainly the cause of many misunderstandings—if we were to treat this as an ordinary marriage.”
“The esteemed commodore can surely be forgiven,” said Lueve without missing a beat, chipper smile intact, “for her ignorance of Nenavarene customs. Among the upper echelons of our society, marriage is a political union. With it we form alliances, broker peace between rival houses, and seal trade partnerships. This is the mindset with which we are approaching these nuptials.”
This was one of those instances where it was explicitly obvious to me the author has no idea what they’re talking about.
She bit the tongue that she was tempted to stick out at him.
As a personal aside, this is one those descriptions I Cannot Stand. Especially so here given the context (the ages, the fact they don’t like each other, that this is a very high-stakes situation which affords a certain amount of gravitas, etc.). Just grow tf up, Talasyn.
Commodore Mathire currently had the floor. “The wedding must be held in the Citadel,” she was railing. “It is the Night Empire’s seat of power and, as Alunsina Ivralis will be the Night Empress, she needs to be there to assume her role.”
“So conduct an official coronation in the Citadel,” Niamha retorted, “after the wedding, which needs to be held here in Eskaya. Her Grace may be Kesath’s future empress, but His Majesty will also be her consort. If you want the Nenavarene to accept him as such, then the nuptials simply must take place on Nenavarene soil.”
And this is why you NEVER marry two heads of different states together 🤗
“For all that you and your comrades professed to despise the stormships, you certainly had no problems using them when it benefited you. Nineteen years ago, before the Hurricane Wars, it was no different. From the moment the Lightweavers learned of the plans for the stormship, they spared no effort to take the technology for themselves. The prototype was being constructed in a valley under territorial dispute; Sunstead used this as a pretext to seize the shipyard. Kesath took it back, and we fought to make sure that nothing could be taken from us ever again.”
Okay, let me get this straight: You’re trying to prove the point that Kesath aren’t the bad guys in the war when the accusation being laid at your feet is you were building what amounts to a superweapon, and your response boils down to, “no u, but YOU were using the superweapon you stole from us”???? Isn’t the initial complaint that they were BUILDING superweapons in the first place?
“Why are you unhappy that we were building nuclear missles in peace time? 🤔😡”
Talasyn studied the sea of proud, belligerent faces, and a staggering epiphany hit her. She could have prevented this, or mitigated it somewhat. Every time she’d treated Alaric like dirt, every time she’d let the Nenavarene cast aspersions on his character, she’d been solidifying in their minds that she was some hapless martyr. This went against the very grain of their matriarchal culture. Prince Elagbi had been right when he said that the court would follow Talasyn’s lead, and her blatant aversion to her circumstances had spread through them.
She had let her emotions get the best of her, and in doing so had not only pushed the Dominion one step closer to a war they could not win, but also placed the Sardovian remnant at greater risk of discovery. And she was dooming everyone to the Voidfell.
Five months to the Moonless Dark.
Five months and it would all be over, if she didn’t rectify the situation.
I am grinding my head against a wall and screaming through my teeth because no??? Talasyn doesn’t have enough social power for this. She has not been present in the court long enough. She has nothing to do with these feelings. Or at least, she shouldn’t because she is, for all intents and purposes, a stranger.
But I want to take some more time to talk about the duel and the scene surrounding it.
Firstly, the duel should never have gotten to the point it did. The queen, who has been characterised as the most competent person of the cast by a wide margin, should have shut it down immediately once she realised who had shown up without invite. Surakwel has well-known grievances against an ally who Urduja is hosting and currently negotiating with, so just knowing what was likely to happen, any sovereign worth their salt would have stopped it happening the moment they recognised the potential trouble.
Secondly, what the hell kind of society has off-the-cuff duels like this? Duels in fantasy fiction are used as an appeal to a higher power to deliver justice in the form of blood and death. And yes, duels did happen in medieval European history (yes, this book is inspired by Southeast Asia, but that's set-dressing; the cultural logic is still European), but only under extreme circumstances; look to that other Adam Driver film for a story surrounding one such duel (which is a fantastic, but very intense, time). So while much of the Western fantasy tradition draws from Dark Age and Medieval Europe, these duels are only able to work like this because they are a final resort when a human-created justice system cannot satisfy the parties involved. In a culture where justice lays in institutions like the Catholic Church, then a higher power is beseeched to decide the outcome for the earthly plane. If you’re taking an approach more akin to the Nordic hólmgangar, then you should worldbuild your culture to be more war-angled so it’s accepted by the populace to just fight each other over stuff. Nenavar has proven several times now that they are a pacifist state, so the hólmgangar approach does not fit. But regardless, what these things both have in common is that duels are events; they are not fought the moment they are declared. There is custom to follow, because this is an extension of the justice system. Duels are messy and bloody affairs, especially if they’re like this one and are being fought to the death, so stuff must be hammered out to deal with the aftermath. Because justice systems work by sets of rules and agreements to keep populations at peace. These are things like conditions, concerns, and arrangements and all that fun stuff because at the heart of it, it’s still a legal procedure (things like, “if I win and you die, your people aren’t allowed to do a revenge on me”). Big risks for big results, huzzah.
Third, the challenged party is the head of a foreign state. Alaric has ZERO obligation, reason, or need to participate in this. He is not bound to this country, nor does he strike me as the type of person to have a bruised ego for refusing a fight. Alaric should have told Surakwel to fuck riiight off. And ultimately, he would not look weak for refusing a duel because he and Urduja are the ones with power here. They also have manners, politics, and general courtesies backing them up. If anything, Surakwel should be laughed out of the room; what he is asking is a bloody ridiculous thing that just makes him look stupid, immature, and socially inept.
GOD this book is making my blood boil.
Were you worried about me? Talasyn nearly asked Alaric point-blank, but she stopped herself in the nick of time. Any concern that he might have for her welfare hinged solely on the political alliance pushing through. She was grasping at straws as usual, thinking she deserved better than she actually did.
I think one of the reasons I don’t jive with Romance, at least of the type that is popular on TikTok, are the people in them are completely dense as to how others feel about them. Delay and deny because ??? you’re bad at reading body language and expressions??? That is not a romance; that is just beating around the bush for a word count.
I am begging publishers for a good modern Romance/Romantasy. One that is focused on character and wants to take a political setting like this with due seriousness. This isn’t tense political drama; this is modern cutesy dating.
“No homeland should allow its people to drink in the troughs with the horses,” Alaric said coldly. “The Allfold did not deserve your loyalty, nor anyone else’s.”
Shit like this is why I don’t believe Alaric as a character. It’s not so much his capacity as a person to code-switch, which 99.9999% of people throughout human history can do, but it’s when he does it (and this is a problem I have with much Romantasy, not just this book): if it is a scene where The Vibes demand him be an understanding boyfriend, he is nice; when The Vibes demand him be a cold bastard, he is that. There is no underlying psychology ruling him, and no curiosity on the part of the author to have Alaric act outside what is accepted as morally correct by a modern American audience. But the dude is not that. He is a sovereign, warlording 1-percenter who has never had to think about peasant welfare. So why should he give a single fuck on any day of his life about poor people drinking from horse troughs?
But he had emerged from behind the tall reeds in an undershirt that bared his sharp collarbones and broad shoulders, that clung to his defined chest. Paired with trousers that were hung low on his lean hips and emphasized the considerable length of his legs, and black armguards hinting at the solid muscle beneath them … the effect had been quite dizzying. It still was.
After raising the parchments to the light to ascertain that the ink had dried, the officiant carefully rolled each one up. She gave one to an initiate and she placed the second one inside the censer hanging from the dragon’s crystalline jaws. Smoke spewed forth, the acrid smell of burning parchment soon engulfed by the perfume of incense as news of the union was carried to the great warships of the ancestors that sailed paradise, the Sky Above the Sky—or so the Nenavarene believed. Talasyn was absolutely certain that, if the afterlife did exist, the ancestors of House Silim would be rolling over in their graves right about now.
I know this isn’t an exact fit for Talasyn in Nenavar, but I think it still worth bringing up because Alaric has this problem in abundance.
Amateur Fantasy has a consistent problem of describing religions and spiritual practices that characters should believe in with the detached language of myths/worldbuilding. Let’s look at an example of “worldbuilding myth language” vs. a believer’s language — “the Dothraki believed there had once been two moons, and that the moons were not true moons but dragons eggs. One hatched and dragons poured out of it” vs. “the moon was an egg, and there had once been two of them. But the first had cracked long ago when the sun bathed it in fire, and a thousand, thousand dragons had poured forth and came unto the world”.
Talasyn came back to herself with all the languidness of a feather wafting to the ground. She blinked to clear the haze from her eyes, staring up at the ceiling. Her gaze fixed on the tapestries above the bed, the sewn stars and the glimmering moons, the dragon of Nenavar …
Nenavar. Sardovia. Kesath.
It all came crashing down on her again, all at once.
What were they doing?
She was going to get everyone killed.
Large arms reached around her waist, trying to bring her closer, but she stiffened at his embrace. The embrace of the Night Emperor.
Talasyn drew her hand back from Alaric’s hair to push at the wide slab of his shoulder. “Get off of me.”
OH FFS. This AGAIN?? Like, the character development in this book flip-flops so much that it feels genuinely BAD to have this now. Go awayyy.
Look if you want to have a romance where the characters draw close like this before shying away ... don’t have them doing this exact thing for all of the book, finally consumate the attraction, and then refuse to have them realise the other party like-likes them afterwards. Also, if you’re going to have regrets come into it, make the character/s mourn their feelings. Make them realise something like, “I am attracted to and in love with someone I should hate, and I don’t know what to do/how to feel about it.” Confront the feelings, because it does not feel genuine otherwise. Goddamnit.
There is well done angst, and badly done angst, and this is of the latter variety.