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A review by booking_along
Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood
lighthearted
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
2.0
Hazelwood followed her very strict plot structure of all her STEM women books a bit too closely with this one, but with a too young tone to make me enjoy this.
normally i don’t mind similar books as long as they are fun.
especially in romance and crime type of books?
i don’t mind knowing how a plot will unwind or how characters will behave or even what will happen in a book.
BUT something has to entertain me while i read. and in Hazelwoods or her books that was her mostly funny writing.
this book sadly lacked the funny sarcasm and snark or even entertaining banter between the characters.
the characters felt too flat and as if the author wasn’t too sure what to do with her characters so she just didn’t develop them at all.
also the whole tiny itty bitty sex unsure or inexperienced but so willing to do anything sexual, slight hints of manic-pixie-dream, girl and this huge muscular larger than basketball players nerdy geeky -did i mention huge?- guy?
clearly Hazelwood has a VERY specific type and can’t seem to be able to write any other type of characters.
the writing style and the overall tone of this entire book -besides the always similarly strange sex scene she includes on her books- this book feels as if it’s targeted towards the young YA readers!
it reads like a book for 12-14 year olds instead of an adult romance.
which is just a strange mixture for me and made me feel a little uncomfortable with the sex scenes included.
not because i don’t think younger YA can’t be told or taught about sex -they should!- but it just didn’t fit together!
there was this almost too cutesy writing style that felt a bit like an adult talking to a child with a baby voice (high pitched squeaky you all know what i mean!) and than all of a sudden there are those graphic sex scenes!
either be cutesy young and innocent or be graphical sexual!
don’t give me whiplash by jumping between both in a very strange way!
i don’t love the idea of the women in her stories learning to absolutely love sex with this one partner anyways especially if they basically never done it before -which nothing wrong with that i never had it either and honestly no thanks?- but than this huge guy that is apparently hung like a tree trunk that’s over a 100 years old takes her and she can’t get enough?
fells already unbelievably uncomfortable for me to think about without adding the entire childish undertone that i felt was throughout this entire book.
maybe personal preference. but i did. der a good amount of other people also point out that her sex scenes are very strange if not anatomically impossible to actually accomplish.
which…. okay? good to know?
anyways… moving on since i am sure everyone got that i wasn’t the biggest fan of the strange writing story this one had.
i also don’t really understand why this author always seems to need one character to be somewhere in europe. which is fine but could you maybe work a little harder on making that sound more realistic than it does or just leave it out?!
maybe i am doing this author injustice her and maybe she has been on europe so often that it’s an accurate representation of that she experienced as a longer term residence where she was.
maybe.
but for the most part this book especially since the sisters were apparently brought up literally all over the map of europe on basically every european country with who knows how many relatives for some strange reason that’s never been explained really well?
but when the main character is asked about it she just very vaguely mentions the overall country some more than ones instead of saying actual cities or at least specific areas in the country? which is strange to me.
if you ask someone from kriselt where they are from they rarely just say italy. they say a town or an are and than maybe hang on “in italy”.
maybe i am nitpicking.
maybe i just want to understand why someone like respond that way because most europeans don’t do it as far as i know as it is described in the book?
like for example my sister did a year on italy. and she came back with some friends she met up with to come and met up with some more of their friend back in germany and they talked about where they were all from or currently life - most just said their towns or the nearest big city (they weren’t all in italy but all over europe) and that’s enough to get a general direction.
so is it an american thing?
again nitpicking sorry.
moving on to another thing that bothered me, shall we?
the snippets of european languages in the books are not very well translated in the way that it feels like the author used on a very „lets kurz google translate that quickly“ kind of translation. which fits with how she describes the european areas shes letting characters wanzet through as well so i guess it fits together.
but honestly, which german speaking person ever answer their phone after being woken up with „brennt da etwas?“ (quite from the book) which translated to „is something burning?“ (which by the way isn’t the german phrase to ask if there is a fire somewhere or if there’s an emergency at all but rather a literal translation of the english way to say it!)
pet peeve of mine but it bothers me.
if you don’t speak the language you are using in your books and you want to use it anyways? not problem! find a native speaker! shouldn’t be too hard in this day of age! contact someone that reviewed and enjoyed a book of yours before! use goodreads or twitter or instagram? youtube even! i am sure a lot of people wouldn’t mind taking the seconds maybe minutes it would take to give you an actual realistic response to use in your book!
another thing - yes another sorry this book just has a lot of things!- was the chronic fainting the main female had.
that could have been a very interesting factor and added such a layer and could have been a great representation of a chronic illness that is as mentioned i n the book just something the character has to live with since the doctors can’t figure it why it’s happening -could something be more realistic to most chronic ill people?- but instead of maybe showing some struggles or issues or even preparations the character has to help herself it’s just used in berg convinced moments to either take the plot into another direction to get out of a situation.
great. thanks.
just what the chronic ill need.
another book that doesn’t do a great job to represent and adds an illness that should be affecting your life a good amount but isn’t shown realistically or well.
thanks.
why even add it than?
to me it felt like it was only there to get the author either out of a scene she didn’t really know how to get on from or change into the next scene so literally fate to black because the main female would faint and that’s the end of that. or it was used as a bit of a comic release for a moment. which yeah thanks. how funny is it that a character just faints if she’s stressed or surprised or sees a spider or some other things. sounds super fun and not dangerous at all. but hey good to get that laugh!
honestly one of the only things i liked about this book was the sister relationship -which was minimalistic but thankfully there- because i loved seeing two completely different sisters just be happy that the other one is doing what she loves and be supportive about it.
Look i am extremely happy for Hazelwood and her success.
i always am so happy to see authors succeed especially ones that normalize women in male dominated feels and show the good and the bad.
but this book is by far her weakest and i think a lot of that has to do with her very fast success rate and the pressure sich rapid success can bring with it and the demand for the next book.
i am guessing here but this book feels like Hazelwood was rushed or felt rushed to publish her next book as fast as she could so she took what was loved in love hypothesis and tried to add that with a bit of a different science field and tried to change the characters just enough that the different names made sense.
but sadly with that she took out all the quirky fun and entertaining things out of the story.
it’s this a bad book?
no.
but it’s not a good one either.
it’s okay to read and if you absolutely love hazelwood and want to read everything she does?
go for it.
if not?
read her other books.
they are better.
normally i don’t mind similar books as long as they are fun.
especially in romance and crime type of books?
i don’t mind knowing how a plot will unwind or how characters will behave or even what will happen in a book.
BUT something has to entertain me while i read. and in Hazelwoods or her books that was her mostly funny writing.
this book sadly lacked the funny sarcasm and snark or even entertaining banter between the characters.
the characters felt too flat and as if the author wasn’t too sure what to do with her characters so she just didn’t develop them at all.
also the whole tiny itty bitty sex unsure or inexperienced but so willing to do anything sexual, slight hints of manic-pixie-dream, girl and this huge muscular larger than basketball players nerdy geeky -did i mention huge?- guy?
clearly Hazelwood has a VERY specific type and can’t seem to be able to write any other type of characters.
the writing style and the overall tone of this entire book -besides the always similarly strange sex scene she includes on her books- this book feels as if it’s targeted towards the young YA readers!
it reads like a book for 12-14 year olds instead of an adult romance.
which is just a strange mixture for me and made me feel a little uncomfortable with the sex scenes included.
not because i don’t think younger YA can’t be told or taught about sex -they should!- but it just didn’t fit together!
there was this almost too cutesy writing style that felt a bit like an adult talking to a child with a baby voice (high pitched squeaky you all know what i mean!) and than all of a sudden there are those graphic sex scenes!
either be cutesy young and innocent or be graphical sexual!
don’t give me whiplash by jumping between both in a very strange way!
i don’t love the idea of the women in her stories learning to absolutely love sex with this one partner anyways especially if they basically never done it before -which nothing wrong with that i never had it either and honestly no thanks?- but than this huge guy that is apparently hung like a tree trunk that’s over a 100 years old takes her and she can’t get enough?
fells already unbelievably uncomfortable for me to think about without adding the entire childish undertone that i felt was throughout this entire book.
maybe personal preference. but i did. der a good amount of other people also point out that her sex scenes are very strange if not anatomically impossible to actually accomplish.
which…. okay? good to know?
anyways… moving on since i am sure everyone got that i wasn’t the biggest fan of the strange writing story this one had.
i also don’t really understand why this author always seems to need one character to be somewhere in europe. which is fine but could you maybe work a little harder on making that sound more realistic than it does or just leave it out?!
maybe i am doing this author injustice her and maybe she has been on europe so often that it’s an accurate representation of that she experienced as a longer term residence where she was.
maybe.
but for the most part this book especially since the sisters were apparently brought up literally all over the map of europe on basically every european country with who knows how many relatives for some strange reason that’s never been explained really well?
but when the main character is asked about it she just very vaguely mentions the overall country some more than ones instead of saying actual cities or at least specific areas in the country? which is strange to me.
if you ask someone from kriselt where they are from they rarely just say italy. they say a town or an are and than maybe hang on “in italy”.
maybe i am nitpicking.
maybe i just want to understand why someone like respond that way because most europeans don’t do it as far as i know as it is described in the book?
like for example my sister did a year on italy. and she came back with some friends she met up with to come and met up with some more of their friend back in germany and they talked about where they were all from or currently life - most just said their towns or the nearest big city (they weren’t all in italy but all over europe) and that’s enough to get a general direction.
so is it an american thing?
again nitpicking sorry.
moving on to another thing that bothered me, shall we?
the snippets of european languages in the books are not very well translated in the way that it feels like the author used on a very „lets kurz google translate that quickly“ kind of translation. which fits with how she describes the european areas shes letting characters wanzet through as well so i guess it fits together.
but honestly, which german speaking person ever answer their phone after being woken up with „brennt da etwas?“ (quite from the book) which translated to „is something burning?“ (which by the way isn’t the german phrase to ask if there is a fire somewhere or if there’s an emergency at all but rather a literal translation of the english way to say it!)
pet peeve of mine but it bothers me.
if you don’t speak the language you are using in your books and you want to use it anyways? not problem! find a native speaker! shouldn’t be too hard in this day of age! contact someone that reviewed and enjoyed a book of yours before! use goodreads or twitter or instagram? youtube even! i am sure a lot of people wouldn’t mind taking the seconds maybe minutes it would take to give you an actual realistic response to use in your book!
another thing - yes another sorry this book just has a lot of things!- was the chronic fainting the main female had.
that could have been a very interesting factor and added such a layer and could have been a great representation of a chronic illness that is as mentioned i n the book just something the character has to live with since the doctors can’t figure it why it’s happening -could something be more realistic to most chronic ill people?- but instead of maybe showing some struggles or issues or even preparations the character has to help herself it’s just used in berg convinced moments to either take the plot into another direction to get out of a situation.
great. thanks.
just what the chronic ill need.
another book that doesn’t do a great job to represent and adds an illness that should be affecting your life a good amount but isn’t shown realistically or well.
thanks.
why even add it than?
to me it felt like it was only there to get the author either out of a scene she didn’t really know how to get on from or change into the next scene so literally fate to black because the main female would faint and that’s the end of that. or it was used as a bit of a comic release for a moment. which yeah thanks. how funny is it that a character just faints if she’s stressed or surprised or sees a spider or some other things. sounds super fun and not dangerous at all. but hey good to get that laugh!
honestly one of the only things i liked about this book was the sister relationship -which was minimalistic but thankfully there- because i loved seeing two completely different sisters just be happy that the other one is doing what she loves and be supportive about it.
Look i am extremely happy for Hazelwood and her success.
i always am so happy to see authors succeed especially ones that normalize women in male dominated feels and show the good and the bad.
but this book is by far her weakest and i think a lot of that has to do with her very fast success rate and the pressure sich rapid success can bring with it and the demand for the next book.
i am guessing here but this book feels like Hazelwood was rushed or felt rushed to publish her next book as fast as she could so she took what was loved in love hypothesis and tried to add that with a bit of a different science field and tried to change the characters just enough that the different names made sense.
but sadly with that she took out all the quirky fun and entertaining things out of the story.
it’s this a bad book?
no.
but it’s not a good one either.
it’s okay to read and if you absolutely love hazelwood and want to read everything she does?
go for it.
if not?
read her other books.
they are better.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Death of parent
Minor: Chronic illness