Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Love on the Brain

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Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

55 reviews

hq_reads's review against another edition

funny informative lighthearted fast-paced

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

I finished this book in less than 24 hours. I could not stop READING! Ali Hazelwood has done it again - such an addictive, funny and perfect romantic comedy!

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.

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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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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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bookishlyndsey's review against another edition

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funny 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? Yes

4.75

This was just as good as “The Love Hypothesis “. I love this STEM based romance. It’s very different than most of the typical romance books I have read because of that. I love Bee and Levi! Such a good, enjoyable read!

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sian's review against another edition

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lighthearted fast-paced

3.0

I admire and respect the way that Ali Hazelwood deliberately writes books that each explicitly address different issues facing women and minorities in STEM and hope she continues doing so! However, the tiny clueless damsel in distress who doesn't realise that the tall, buff love interest is into her

and doesn't remotely hate her, despite him explicitly telling her so, multiple times

despite it being so obvious to the reader, got a) a little repetitive/annoying and b) was too similar to The Love Hypothesis. Really loved the characters of Rocio and Kaylee.

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kcbatts's review against another edition

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lighthearted medium-paced

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

2.25

I picked this up because I liked The Love Hypothesis. I didn't like this book, unfortunately.
I wanted to DNF early on, but didn't. I ended up enjoying more than I thought because I'm pretty empassioned on issues covered in the book, epecially standardized testing.
I dislike the height difference. It happens, but not every guy is tall. I for one wouldn't date someone 16 inches taller than me, nor do I know anyone that has that kind of height difference.
I wasn't a fan of how everything wrapped up.

And a gun? In Texas? In a NASA building? I get we have guns but Texas looks bad enough.

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mollyolloxenfree25's review against another edition

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funny inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

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

4.25

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hannibanani29's review against another edition

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emotional funny 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

4.5

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auteaandtales's review against another edition

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emotional funny informative lighthearted medium-paced

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

3.5

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juliaaaaaa's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted fast-paced

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

3.0

the "im so tiny" and "oh hes so big" is making me sick, i just imagined she was 5'9 because she was giving tall vibes idk.
the plot was soo predictable, i knew from the start levi was whatever username on twitter and that guy was shady.
the sex scenes were weird, like ajsja "open your mouth" and "good girl" boy what the hell...

i enjoyed the love hipothesis wayy more.

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