Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - Love on the Brain

Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

91 reviews

juliaegreene's review against another edition

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lighthearted fast-paced

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

thoughts on this book:

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

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flohbeutel's review against another edition

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funny informative medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Bücher mit der Kategorie von Paaren, denen ich 3 Monate gebe, bevor sie sich wieder trennen.

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ambaright's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted fast-paced

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? Yes

4.0

Guess this is it - being in love. Truly in love. Lots and lots of horrible, wondrous, and violent emotions.

What Would Marie Curie Do? A question Bee Königswasser is all too familiar with. So, what would Marie do if she was offered the lead on a neuroengineering project at NASA… but had to co-lead with her grad school nemesis, Levi Ward (aka the Wardass)?

Ali Hazelwood dazzles the world again with a steamy STEM romance novel. This time it’s all about the brain! It’s yet another grumpy sunshine trope, with secret online identities, the nemesis feud/forced proximity, and a high stakes project. Not to mention, Ali tackles the heavy topic of #FairGraduateAdmissions, and the absurdity that is the GRE. This book is perfect for STEM girlies who wish to be seen in romance novels!

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kaylaskindle's review against another edition

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lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

I loved this book! I’ve recommended it to friends, and I loved The Love Hypothesis as well. My only issues with this book was the timing of the plot twist, I wish we got more of the conclusion than we did. I feel like I have a lot of questions about the plot twist that weren’t answered in the last few chapters which irks me a bit as a reader. This book DID grab my attention, I did not want to put it down!! Though, when I hit the plot twist I was kind of left sitting there like “really?… that’s it?” maybe I didn’t read it as deeply as the author anticipated, but it just felt a little lackluster to me.

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lucyrudd's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted relaxing medium-paced

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

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negs's review against another edition

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emotional funny inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

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? Yes

4.75

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diana_raquel's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a community of women trying to mind their own business must be in want of a random man’s opinion."

After loving "The Love Hypothesis", I decided to read this book. Imagine my surprise when I discover that this book has the same structure that the previous one. Really, its the same story with differente character names.
In other book, I might give a bad rating because its the exact same story and this book made me waste my time. However, I can't. Not in this book.
Why? Because it's so damn entertaining. I had fun reading this book! Never a boring moment.
So, I'll give a 3 stars rating, but if you're considering reading this book, just know that this is a repetition of the previous romance.

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