Scan barcode
prettynerdy3's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Moderate: Chronic illness, Death of parent, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Emotional abuse, Grief, Gun violence, Animal death, Car accident, Toxic relationship, and Infidelity
ankiaisreading's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Graphic: Sexual content and Gun violence
Moderate: Violence, Infidelity, Sexism, Grief, Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Chronic illness, Death of parent, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Death, Toxic friendship, Vomit, Misogyny, Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, and Alcohol
readmorbookz's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Moderate: Gun violence, Abandonment, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, Animal death, and Toxic relationship
mlleelora's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Graphic: Bullying, Gun violence, Sexism, Sexual harassment, Violence, Toxic relationship, Panic attacks/disorders, Misogyny, Infidelity, and Emotional abuse
Moderate: Gaslighting, Death, Death of parent, Car accident, Grief, Animal death, Chronic illness, and Alcohol
leahfoko's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I thought Bee was a much more interesting character. One of the things I appreciated was that even though she had some stubborn things that got on my nerves (a lot) (like refusing to acknowledge that Levi might like her at all, being so stubborn that he hated her even when he told her like 500 times that he didn’t, refusing to accept love) the reasons for her doing those things made a lot of sense. Her backstory explained it very well, and you can totally understand why she is unable to accept these things because of how she has been hurt in the past and needs to protect herself. Her reasoning makes sense, unlike how I felt about Olive in the Love Hypothesis. So that made her a much better character for me.
I love love LOVED the online relationship thing turning out that Bee and Levi were Marie and Shmac the whole time. I saw it coming, but I love that shit. It reminded me of this favorite fanfiction of mine I read in high school, but I have never seen anything like this show up in an actual book before. Maybe because Hazelwood is a fanfic writer she would know the online world well and therefore added this plot line. Whatever the reason, I felt it was a really unique take on romance and I just really loved it.
I was also so shook by the Guy reveal™️. I was NOT expecting shit to go down that intensely. I have not seen anything like that in a book before, like, damn. The espionage. WILD.
I am not really a fan of the steamy scenes that Ali Hazelwood writes, for some reason the word choices she uses sometimes just do not do it for me, I am not really sure how to explain why. I don’t think that’s a deal breaker for this book, especially cause I felt the same way about the sex scenes in the first book. But I always find myself struggling my way through those scenes with a slight cringe the whole time.
Overall, this book followed the successful form of enemies to lovers trope well (meaning that the hate comes from a huge misunderstanding rather than any actual mistreatment) with only a few issues in the beginning (his comment on her clothing was inexcusable to me and his reasoning didn’t do it for me) but it also added some new, fresh things that I hadn’t seen done before and I really liked that. Also, lots of nerd references had me cackling. Love that. Very much enjoyed this book.
Graphic: Cursing, Medical content, Gun violence, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexism, and Sexual content
Minor: Death, Death of parent, Infidelity, and Animal death
__romancereader__'s review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Car accident, Cursing, Gun violence, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, Violence, Death, Alcohol, Animal death, Death of parent, and Infidelity
Not all content warnings are about the main characters some are and some are about the characters that come along in the book❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥kassidyreads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Sexism, Infidelity, Misogyny, Death of parent, Toxic relationship, Death, and Animal death
Minor: Gun violence
hq_reads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Was it predictable? Yes. Was it full of overused tropes? Yes. Was it cheesy? Absolutely. But I don't care. There was something so comforting reading this book, knowing they were definitely going to get together. I still had fun reading through it - sometimes you just need a good comforting, easy read and this delivered exactly that.
I love the humour in her writing and I loved the FMC Bee. I usually don't enjoy the miscommunication trope but it worked for this story! Dr Levi Ward is definitely a contender for top 10 book boyfriends of all time - he's bypassed Dr Adam! The anticipation and slow burn of their relationship was done so well - SO WELL.
Having gone through a postgraduate degree in STEM myself (marine biology), I found so many moments in this book (and the Love Hypothesis) extremely relatable! I love that Hazelwood draws attention to the day-to-day discrimination women in STEM face, and the examples she uses are very much real and common in many professions. She is able to articulate all the microaggressions and double standards very well, in a way that many women find it hard to communicate as these behaviours are often quite subtle and hard to prove. I feel like women reading her books who experience this will be able to better recognise when they are facing this discrimination in the workplace and feel confident to speak up.
Graphic: Misogyny and Sexism
Moderate: Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Sexual content, and Death of parent
Minor: Chronic illness, Gun violence, and Animal death
juliaegreene's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
- i did not like bee. at all. she was super annoying, very stupid for someone with a PhD, and felt like a pick me/"not like other girls" kind of woman. i felt like she was only vegan for the sake of making her seem special and same thing with the whole running plotline.
- levi is a fine male lead. good, even. but ali writes him like his size is the only important quality about him for the first half of the book, and it just gets worse as bee gets to know him and they have sex (more on this later). hulking, towering, huge, massive, broad, big, tall, 6'4", oh my fucking god it never ended. and bee being like 5'2" just seemed ridiculous. overall, he seemed like a good guy, but all the shit with his family seemed unnecessary and he genuinely just needed to go to therapy (i feel like it was only mentioned that he'd gone before to make him more of a desirable Self Aware romantic lead). i normally love love love an obsessed male lead (go ahead, be a simp!!) but considering how long ago he fell for bee and the time in between that and the story, it just seemed weird and kind of creepy at times. like, why is she your phone passcode? do you even know her? ugh.
- the miscommunications between the two of them were unreasonable. bee wearing her grandmother's ring ON HER RING FINGER was just dumb and created unnecessary tension for 2/3 of the book so that levi would think she was married to tim.
- side note: the whole fiance/cheating/best friend plot seemed thrown in only when it was convenient for the story or to keep levi and bee apart
- i was not expecting them to be FWB, which again was an unnecessary miscommunication. she thinks he's just getting a crush out of his system, he wants her to move in. JUST TALK. OH MY GOD.
- okay, the sex: honestly, it was just cringey. ali's writing is a whole lot of things that i want to get into, but the sex scenes felt very immature at times and like she thought she was writing super deep and well in others. the way their size difference came into play made me really uncomfortable, and the way levi talked to bee and bee thought about him felt really possessive and steeped in gender roles.
- the plot itself (BLINK, guy, the way the romance progressed) felt very predictable. i've read the love hypothesis, so i felt like i knew what ali wanted to do from the beginning and could call what would happen when a character or issue was introduced for the most part.
- side note: the shmac thing was predictable but fine for the most part, though i did hate the huge paragraph that everyone was thirsting over. dude, why are you sending all that shit to A STRANGER? boundary: crossed
- another side note: the cat? really? unnoticed in a NASA facility? and only to serve as a plot device when bee has A GUN pointed at her head? all of the plot climax was ridiculous and i didn't see the point. ali tried to go big and it really did not work for me.
- ali's writing in this book was so much worse than TLH. the millennial humor, the galaxy leggings, the unprompted and honestly annoying interjections of rants on the GRE and marie curie that just overloaded the book, all of them could have been made into a drinking game that probably would have poisoned me before the halfway mark. my favorite thing to hate was the TM jokes that i think were supposed to be another quirk of bee's but instead made me want to scream. i unfortunately didn't have the ebook, so i couldn't search, but i counted 41 instances while reading the physical version. even 2 was too many.
- things i actually did like: wlw!! banter was not terrible at times! fuck standardized testing!!
- i finished this book last night, so i think i might need some time to process still, but as of right now i'm going to give love on the brain 1.5 or 2 stars. i originally was going to do 1, but i think the fact that it was such a fun experience to hate it should count for something.
- fuck reylo all my homies hate reylo
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Gun violence
Minor: Infidelity, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Animal death, Death of parent, and Toxic friendship
lucyrudd's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Toxic friendship, Animal death, Death of parent, and Toxic relationship