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A review by booksalacarte
Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
3⭐️4🌶️
Contemporary romance
Dual POv
1st/3rd Person POV
Stem FMC
Workplace romance
Forbidden romance
Open door romance
I read this in under 12 hours. I didn’t hate this book… it was fine.
I think the FMC’s emotional unavailability was extreme and made it hard to relate and like her. I mean, she was an unlikable character in her descriptions of herself… so maybe AH wrote her too well into that box? I wasn’t really moved by the reasoning behind the why’s of her personality, even though they seemed to be traumatic enough for the FMC to have slight PTSD… I expected it to be more? I don’t know. It seemed like a forced background story.
The plot with the rival workplace was good. I enjoyed how it came about… even how the side characters played into everything. But it was so much less plot than spicy scenes… which shows the “this book leans toward erotic instead of rom-com” line. There were more spice scenes… they weren’t necessarily any more spicy. It all felt really shallow. The big gestures, miscommunication and declarations were all there… but they were meh…
It should have worked better, all the pieces were there, but it didn’t.
Contemporary romance
Dual POv
1st/3rd Person POV
Stem FMC
Workplace romance
Forbidden romance
Open door romance
I read this in under 12 hours. I didn’t hate this book… it was fine.
I think the FMC’s emotional unavailability was extreme and made it hard to relate and like her. I mean, she was an unlikable character in her descriptions of herself… so maybe AH wrote her too well into that box? I wasn’t really moved by the reasoning behind the why’s of her personality, even though they seemed to be traumatic enough for the FMC to have slight PTSD… I expected it to be more? I don’t know. It seemed like a forced background story.
The plot with the rival workplace was good. I enjoyed how it came about… even how the side characters played into everything. But it was so much less plot than spicy scenes… which shows the “this book leans toward erotic instead of rom-com” line. There were more spice scenes… they weren’t necessarily any more spicy. It all felt really shallow. The big gestures, miscommunication and declarations were all there… but they were meh…
It should have worked better, all the pieces were there, but it didn’t.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Sexual content, Gaslighting, and Toxic friendship