Book Review #142: Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

 

Rue is happy with her life as a biotech engineer with few friends and no repeat hook-ups until she meets Eli, the extremely attractive man trying to take over the company she works for. Torn between loyalty and an ill-advised connection, can Rue make the right decision to save her company and her heart?

I'm a huge fan of Ali Hazelwood, so this book was high on my most anticipated books for this year. She always writes romance really well so, even though there was a disclaimer at the beginning of this book stating that it's different from her other works, I was sure I'd still enjoy it.

And while I did enjoy it, I was also disappointed with it.

But like all of Hazelwood's books, it was really easy to get into. I picked it up to skim the first page and ended up reading the whole first chapter because I was already hooked. I felt like I knew Rue just from that and really liked being in her head.

It was also just an easy read all the way through. Even when I wasn't liking what was happening, I was still interested in the story and was intrigued to know how it would end.

I then started to find problems with the story. For a start, it was way too 'love at first sight' for me. The story spent a long time telling the reader that there was a connection between the characters, but this was never really shown.

In terms of Hazelwood's male love interests, Eli is probably my least favourite. I can't quite put my finger on why but he seems quite disingenuous, there's a lot of what he says that I don't really believe. He also comes across as a bit odd and needy, which doesn't really fit with who Rue is. They didn't work very well together for me and I didn't feel like they needed to be together.

One thing I thought had improved as Hazelwood's novels continued were the writing of sex scenes. I found them really cringey in 'The Love Hypothesis' but grew to like them in her next book. However, here they seem to have reverted back. They weren't fun to read and some of them didn't do anything to move the story forward.

In addition to all of this, not much happens. It takes a while for the side story to really get interesting, and when it does, for me it was a lot more interesting than the romance. 

There was no real third-act conflict and the ending wasn't particularly memorable.

So while I do still love Hazelwood's writing, and even though in terms of general rom-com novels this one is successful, this book was probably my least favourite of Hazelwood's works.

3/5