ARC Review: "Not In Love" by Ali Hazelwood ★★★

ARC Review: Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

Truth be told, I was Not in Love with this story as much as I’d have liked. Though, it is a refreshing difference from Ali Hazel’s usual tone in STEM romances. This one, to quote Ali herself, is “less of a rom-com and more of an erotic romance” and well she was not wrong. While there are tropes of forbidden romance, insta-love, he falls first, we also have enemies with benefits and reverse grumpy x sunshine (with black cat girl and golden retriever boy) which is a change, this had a lot of deeper tones too such as finding oneself, acceptance and forgiveness.

It’s always men with glasses – I’m also looking at you, Matthew Flannagan (The Fiancé Dilemma). And when I say “it” I mean a gentleman in the streets and a freak in the sheets.

“Out of all the people I’ve met, the things I’ve wanted, the places I’ve been, none has ever felt as necessary as you do. Because I love you. I love you in a way I didn’t think I was capable of. I love you because you showed me how to fall in love. And I don’t regret it, Rue.”

[Contains some spoilers]

PLOT SUMMARY
28-year-old Rue Siebert is a biotech engineer at Kline, a pristine and promising start-up company for food science run by the brilliant and admired Florence Kline. Rue is socially awkward and others often perceive this as cold and distant, but she is content with her few friends and stable job. (one might say “I think I like this little life”)

Her peace is threatened by the unexpected arrival of Harkness, a private equity firm that intends to bring Kline down. Not only that, one of the firm’s main leaders, 34-year-old Eli Killgore, is the man Rue met the night before after matching with him on a dating app, who saved her from a scene with her problematic brother and drove her home to keep her safe. Needless to say, this coincidence does not sit well with her, especially considering he wants to take over. Not on her watch.

Eli has had so many one-nighters he does not remember their names. But Rue is so different that he soon obsesses about her – and he is just as surprised as she is to find out she works for the very same company he wants to take down.

They say to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and perhaps this affair can work to both their advantages. Or perhaps they will get so caught up in each other that love is found unexpectedly, secrets come out, and trusts are broken. Perhaps Rue has Eli’s intention all wrong from the start and perhaps Rue could lose everything she knows.

This is Ali Hazelwood’s first dual POV told from the first-person perspective of Rue and the third-person perspective of Eli.

If he was honest with himself, he’d known this was going to be something else from the very first night. She was something else. Utterly unique. Unpredictable. Deliciously complicated.

OVERALL OPINIONS
I am somewhere between 3 and 4 stars for this. Ultimately, this is not an all-time favourite from Ali. I would make this a 4 for the premise and actual wrap-up of the plot (I became disinterested a third of the way into the story up until the halfway point) but make it a 3 for the characters. I did not warm to a lot of them, Eli was probably an exception. The spice was excellent, and there was a lot of it.

I mentioned previously that I was looking forward to this because I knew this would be a dual POV, and seeing situations from both points of view is always interesting. Unfortunately, this fell short because I did not warm to the main character Rue initially (probably the point, and of course I appreciate her experiences from her childhood making her the way she is) but that had a knock-on effect and it took most of the book for me to like her. I almost disliked her as much as Rita from Tessa Bailey’s “Too Hot To Handle”. And a lot of what Eli was doing was simping in just about every chapter which got too repetitive for my liking haha. At least he admits he is a simp, we love a self-aware man.

After reading her previous works, I became more aware of Ali’s tendency to include a villain-like character, and the style of the reveal in this book is like in the Love, Theoretically where the main character really looks up to them, feels they owe so much to them and is consequently betrayed. This book also, once again, painted STEM in a poor light – but this time we also have that a woman in STEM is a villain. This was an interesting take and I did like it, I really liked this plot, but I wish we had a different plotline because we already have this idea. But I also want to see healthier stories about STEM (and a few less broke scientists).

Very random but we’ve had biology, we’ve had physics, we should get a *chemistry* romance – because you really, really might as well: chemistry with a bit of chemistry.

Indeed, Ali churns out so many carbon copies of not only her books (this storyline is a great deal like Love, Theoretically: working with the enemy, betrayal) but also her love interests: big, tall, body-built nerds (which is quite a stereotype as not all nerds are like that) in this story there’s Tisha’s Diego, and Rue’s Eli – and you’re not fooling anyone by giving this one wavy hair and those Clark Kent glasses, Ali! I really would love more of a variety of body types. I admit the 50 Shades of Eli is a rather different approach. And we had a tall woman instead.

That all being said, its tone was very different. More serious, and for this book it worked very effectively. They both have some issues from childhood, Rue especially so. Both have lost their parents and have (or have had, in Eli’s case) a rough patch with their sibling.

<< Positives >>
🠚The cover is stunning! I love the mix of pink and navy blue.
🠚Perfect introduction, with the opening lines: “Ladies, this is a genuine, nonrhetorical question: How do the two of you survive in the real world?”
🠚I loved when there was an emotional connection between the Rue and Eli. And it was lovely how supportive and protective Eli was.
🠚The moments where Rue and Eli share their terrible stories, and neither of them judges the other for what they have said and done.
🠚The friendship between women in STEM – Tisha and Rue are so sweet and funny, and it is nice that Minami tries to help Rue, and eventually Rue stands up for Minami and what she went through at the hands of Florence. I even like that Tisha’s sister Nyota becomes helpful and even drops “the usual roasting in favor of some heartfelt sympathy” at a time when Rue really needs it.
🠚The funny moments, admittedly few and far between. My personal favourite is the moment between Minami and Eli when they exchange: “Wow, he’s such a shithead.” “I can’t prove it.” “Such an alleged shithead.”
🠚Tiny the dog!! The way Rue goes from not being a fan of pets to finally petting his head, albeit clumsily – and her having to go after Tiny chasing a squirrel in “a Looney Tunes-worthy display”. I pictured it so well haha!
🠚I love how we have a moment where the subject of dogs looking like their owners is mentioned “an an elderly lady who was walking a poodle that looked eerily like her. I glanced at Tiny, then Eli. There was a resemblance there, too—the messy, curly brown hair. Was this a thing?”
🠚The two references to Scotland. Scottish me enjoyed that. And Rue is correct, it is beautiful – or as I’d like to say, bonnie.

<< Negatives >>
🠚Eli got cheated on in high school and you would have thought the last thing he’d be doing is considering hypothetical scenarios wondering what would have happened if he was still with his now-ex-fiancé and met Ali “Do you have to go through with it, for it to be cheating?”. That whole moment was so strange.
🠚“Your damn mouth,” he murmured, “is the most obscenely lovely thing I’ve ever had the burden of seeing.” – this really felt like a backhanded compliment.
🠚“If her heart has to be broken, I’d rather it be me. That way I can help her pick up the pieces.” – Eli, sir, I don’t think that’s how that works. I don’t think that’s as attractive as you think it is.
🠚But they kept saying they’d “had sex” but I would not consider only doing oral sex part of sex. Threw me off at first because I thought I had misread something haha.
🠚Jay Sousa’s character just disappears after a part of the way through. I know he was not necessary but he was amusing I would have liked more of him.
🠚There is no mention of Rue’s brother in the Epilogue, set a year later. I would have liked a proper resolution or closure to their relationship.
🠚McKenzie being mentioned a dozen times in this story felt excessive. Talking about an ex with a new girl is a no.

CHARACTERS
-ˋˏ ꒰ Rue꒱ ˎˊ-
↳ She had the most complex character development in the story. She has been through a lot as a kid, and then she is betrayed by the one person she trusted the most. The way she stands up for her friends in front of her “friend” Florence is admirable. She has a lot of compassion and it is admirable that she does what is best for her and shuts out/walks away/interrupts Florence when she tries to justify her horrid actions.
🠚She goes from being insecure and distant to confident and close with Eli. That was beautiful to see.
🠚Also, we love the green dress with pockets! I related to her saying that she’s protective when it comes to her friends because she has so few of them, and to her wanting to use apps where women make the first move.

people were difficult – to read, to understand, to please.

-ˋˏ ꒰ Eli꒱ ˎˊ-
↳ There is a correlation between the number of times he said he wanted to lock her up in his house and do whatever he wanted with her and the number of times I have not vibed with this haha. Please stop. The spice scenes themselves were okay if they’re what you’re into.
🠚I genuinely liked him from the very first moment, when he came to Rue’s rescue not knowing that he was dealing with her brother. I did not like some of his possessive nature but overall, he was fine.
🠚It is sweet that he wants everyone to get along (his business partners and his girlfriend), and how he sacrifices his own plans for his business of revenge because Rue’s patent is at stake. It shows a lot of emotional maturity.
🠚Also, “Open your eyes and look. At. Me.” was really giving Homelander vibes “ASHLEY!” haha!

“I want her to be alright more than I want to keep my dignity.”

FAV QUOTES
• Her attention felt more previous than gold, stocks, market crash predictions.
• serious unsmiling men tended to be considered consummate professionals, while serious, unsmiling women were often written off as haughty shrews.
• I was utterly, fantastically irrelevant in the grand scheme of Kline. And yet, here he was. Looking at me like nothing else existed in the world.
• We just stared at each other with no disappointment and no recrimination, two terrible people with horrible stories, two terrible people who maybe were more interested in judging themselves than each other.
• “I forget to look at other things, when you’re around.”
• Rue Siebert. Changing his cellular makeup, one solemn look at the time.
• That self-effacing, teasing smile of his–I wanted to touch it.
• He shook his head, exhaling a rueful laugh – I love this because it includes Rue in it RUEful.
• “You’re a wild ride, Rue. I’ve never met anyone like you, and never will again.”
• He’d told himself to be careful with her, over and over. To keep his guard up. He’d failed, miserably.
• “Do you think that maybe there’s another version of us, somewhere in another timeline? Where we’re not just a messed-up lump of scar tissue, and we’re whole enough to be capable of loving others the way they want to be loved?” | “I just don’t think that we need another timeline to be able to do that.”
• Chastity, the bane of my already plenty-baned existence.
• Call me if you need me…Call me even if you don’t.”
• “You know how hard it is for women in our field...” “Minami is a woman, too…Florence, having it hard doesn’t give us a pass to cheat other people out of their work, especially not to screw over people who had it harder.”
• “Please don’t say that the real equity in the biofuel tech was the friends we made along the way.”
• “I used to think that endings could be happy, or sad. That stories could be happy, or sad. That people could be happy, or sad. And I always figured that my ending, my story, me, would always fall in the latter…But then I met you. And you made me wonder, for the very first time, if there was a flaw in my reasoning. Maybe people can be happy and sad. Maybe stories are messy and complicated.”
• “There had never been anyone like you, and for a long time I didn’t have the word.” | “What word?” | “Love.” The world stopped. Tipped over. Returned to its original state—but brighter. Sharper. Sweeter. Perfect.

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I received an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review and I’d like to thank Ali Hazelwood, Berkley, and NetGalley for the opportunity. This has not affected my opinion in any way.

“Not in Love” is out June 11th