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A review by shaysshelf
Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood
slow-paced
3.5
Not in Love - Ali Hazelwood
* Women in STEM
* He's obsessed, falls first & falls harder
* Her spiciest book yet
* Rivals to lovers
* Workplace romance
* Secrets
I have really mixed feelings and I'm not sure how to rate this one just yet. But I'm leaning towards 3.75. I liked this book, but I wanted so much more from it at the same time.
Rue grew up impoverished. She is self-proclaimed, weird with food, due to her childhood trauma surrounding food insecurity. She also struggles with reading people and navigating social cues. She exudes a number of traits similar to that of people on the autism spectrum, but it is unclear throughout the entire book (unless I missed something) if she is on the spectrum, or if some of these traits are related to her upbringing.
Eli is a golden retriever. He will essentially do or be anything to get Rue's attention. It's endearing the way he wants to learn everything about her and do everything he can for her. There are times it comes off slightly desperate but he's just so gone for her it's cute. Also, I love his dog Tiny!
I found Not In Love lacked plot, and the very minimal plot that was there was very predictable. I would have liked the reason for the "villain's" actions and decisions to be more complex than just "I didn't have a choice, half heartedly blaming another person who is no longer in their life, then turning around and doing it again with zero justification other than "what else was I supposed to do?" and a disingenuous "sorry".
90% of this story was Rue putting up walls and Eli doing his best to smash through them, but like.. respectfully.
This couple did have chemistry, and the amount of spice in this book clearly demonstrated it. Rue struggled with social interactions and communication, so Eli resorted to communicating with her almost exclusively through hooking up. I would have liked to see some more relationship development outside of the bedroom.
I did really like the trauma bonding and sharing of the horrible stories about themselves. It helped demonstrate the level of trust they were working on developing.
I absolutely loved the work Rue was was working on and appreciated how it connected to her story. I hope it is something that could actually be created one day.
Ali always does an excellent job of representing women in STEM and the struggles with living that academia life. There is no question she did that again.
One thing that I found slightly frustrating though, was as someone who considers myself well educated, there were so many uses of unnecessarily large or overtly complex words that were unrelated to the science. As someone who is not a scientist by trade, I expect to not know all the science-y verbiage, but there were several situations where I found myself stopping to google a word that I was unfamiliar with, that was entirely unrelated to the science. It made me question my own vocabulary. I understand that Ali is an incredibly well educated woman, but some of the language and syntax felt unnecessarily complex.
Thank you to NetGalley, Berkeley Romance and Alida Hazelwood for the opportunity to read and advanced copy of Not In Love.
* Women in STEM
* He's obsessed, falls first & falls harder
* Her spiciest book yet
* Rivals to lovers
* Workplace romance
* Secrets
I have really mixed feelings and I'm not sure how to rate this one just yet. But I'm leaning towards 3.75. I liked this book, but I wanted so much more from it at the same time.
Rue grew up impoverished. She is self-proclaimed, weird with food, due to her childhood trauma surrounding food insecurity. She also struggles with reading people and navigating social cues. She exudes a number of traits similar to that of people on the autism spectrum, but it is unclear throughout the entire book (unless I missed something) if she is on the spectrum, or if some of these traits are related to her upbringing.
Eli is a golden retriever. He will essentially do or be anything to get Rue's attention. It's endearing the way he wants to learn everything about her and do everything he can for her. There are times it comes off slightly desperate but he's just so gone for her it's cute. Also, I love his dog Tiny!
I found Not In Love lacked plot, and the very minimal plot that was there was very predictable. I would have liked the reason for the "villain's" actions and decisions to be more complex than just "I didn't have a choice, half heartedly blaming another person who is no longer in their life, then turning around and doing it again with zero justification other than "what else was I supposed to do?" and a disingenuous "sorry".
90% of this story was Rue putting up walls and Eli doing his best to smash through them, but like.. respectfully.
This couple did have chemistry, and the amount of spice in this book clearly demonstrated it. Rue struggled with social interactions and communication, so Eli resorted to communicating with her almost exclusively through hooking up. I would have liked to see some more relationship development outside of the bedroom.
I did really like the trauma bonding and sharing of the horrible stories about themselves. It helped demonstrate the level of trust they were working on developing.
I absolutely loved the work Rue was was working on and appreciated how it connected to her story. I hope it is something that could actually be created one day.
Ali always does an excellent job of representing women in STEM and the struggles with living that academia life. There is no question she did that again.
One thing that I found slightly frustrating though, was as someone who considers myself well educated, there were so many uses of unnecessarily large or overtly complex words that were unrelated to the science. As someone who is not a scientist by trade, I expect to not know all the science-y verbiage, but there were several situations where I found myself stopping to google a word that I was unfamiliar with, that was entirely unrelated to the science. It made me question my own vocabulary. I understand that Ali is an incredibly well educated woman, but some of the language and syntax felt unnecessarily complex.
Thank you to NetGalley, Berkeley Romance and Alida Hazelwood for the opportunity to read and advanced copy of Not In Love.