Chapters of Aubrey

NOT IN LOVE
★☆☆☆☆

BY ALI HAZELWOOD

|Synopsis|

Rue Siebert might not have it all, but she has enough: a few friends she can always count on, the financial stability she yearned for as a kid, and a successful career as a biotech engineer at Kline, one of the most promising start-ups in the field of food science. Her world is stable, pleasant, and hard-fought. Until a hostile takeover and its offensively attractive front man threatens to bring it all crumbling down.

Eli Killgore and his business partners want Kline, period. Eli has his own reasons for pushing this deal through – and he’s a man who gets what he wants. With one burning exception: Rue. The woman he can’t stop thinking about. The woman who’s off-limits to him.

Torn between loyalty and an undeniable attraction, Rue and Eli throw caution out the lab and the boardroom windows. Their affair is secret, no-strings-attached, and has a built-in deadline: the day one of their companies will prevail. But the heart is risky business – one that plays for keeps.

|Review|

DNF @ 33%

Listen I love a good Hazelwood romance. STEM hotties, one sex scene, teeny tiny girls, wash rinse and repeat. I’m okay with her formula and I like it, dare I say even look forward to it. I don’t understand why this one didn’t work for me. I just didn’t care though and picking it up felt like a chore.

Something that put me off this book from the start though is right at the beginning of the book we had two conversations between Rue and her friends that I felt completely left out of. You know when you join a group of friends having a conversation you have no context in and you feel left out and then zone out? Yeah that’s what I mean. Probably not great to isolate your readers from the start.

If I had to make a guess of what happens in the book:

• It’ll be Hazelwood’s horniest book yet
• The patent on the hook will be Rue’s not the company one
• There will be a third act conflict where that patent stuff blows up in Eli’s face
• Rue will not lose her patent and will instead go under the umbrella of Eli’s company thus completing the third act HEA

Someone please come back and tell me if any of my predictions are correct!

**EDIT**
After further research it seems others are of the same opinion as me but as better at articulating why they didn’t like it. These opinions include but are not limited to:

• Inconsistencies in Rue’s background. How her family was food insecure yet she got an ice skating scholarship? The amount of money you have to dump into a sport to reach the level of scholarship is insane let alone the commitment.
• Rue’s relationship with her brother. How did it go from forgiving to whatever the heck that was? We’re never told apparently.