This was a great read!
I was completely captivated the entire time. I loved Rue and Eli. It was amazing seeing their relationship develop throughout the book.
This is definitely a must-read book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the book!

Another read outside of my usual area, but I also devoured this in one sitting! I adored the characters in this one!

Another Ali Hazelwood masterpiece! I enjoyed this one so much! Rue just might have wormed her way into being my number one favorite of the Hazelwood main characters . And Eli!!!! Ughhh!!! The communication in this book is also something I absolutely appreciate, and I cannot wait for the next book from Ali!

I absolutely adored Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood. I have been a huge fan of all her books, and this one was no exception. Rue and Eli were both great characters, and though I was occasionally frustrated with them, their actions made sense with their characterization. The romance progressed differently than in other Ali Hazelwood books but I did not enjoy it any less. Though it is probably not my absolute favorite of her books, I still loved it and would give it 5 stars.

Say hello to my new favorite Ali Hazelwood! I didn’t think anything could top Check and Mate but I’m so happy Hazelwood blew me away two books in a row (Also loved that Check and Mate Easter egg in this one).

The lust at first sight, the angst, the forbidden romance, the reluctant to love heroine, the total simp of a hero, the tragic backstories that made them think they didn’t deserve love, and the way they were absolutely unable to stay away from each other! Ugh, it just totally worked for me. I’m a bit partial to a hookup to lovers trope when it’s done right. I just could not get enough of these two characters.

I went in knowing this was Hazelwood’s spiciest book yet, veering away from romcom and more towards erotic. Which had me very worried because her spicy scenes can read a bit unnatural to me. But the spice in this was way better written and the chemistry was off the charts. So yay for me, but if spice isn’t your thing, there’s quite a bit of explicit scenes in this.

I can’t wait for everyone to fall in love with Hazelwood’s new book this summer. if you’re a fan of spicy, angsty reads and STEM heroines, this cannot be missed!

Ali Hazelwood is one of my favorite contemporary romance authors and Not in Love solidly keeps her in that spot! I really enjoyed every aspect of this book - the romance, the relationships, the friendships... Just pure perfection. I couldn't put it down!

This has shot up to number two on my list of Ali Hazelwood favorites. It was mature but not boring. It was sweet when it needed to be and it was other ways when it needed to be ;). This felt like a raw and real relationship.

Rue Siebert has gone through a lot to get to where she is today. A rough upbringing led her to pursue a career in bioengineering, where she dedicated countless hours working on a patent close to her heart at Kline, one of the most promising start-up companies. But when a hostile take-over, headed by her almost one-night stand, threatens everything she worked so hard for, Rue is left scrambling. Eli Killgore and his business partners will do whatever it takes to get Kline. They have a not-so-great history with the company's founder and are looking for justice. Eli is usually focused on the task at hand, but Rue is a distraction he doesn't foresee. The attraction between the pair is undeniable, and they know that acting on it would jeopardize their careers, but that doesn't stop them from wanting to.

We can all agree that Hazelwood has a formula she never seems to deviate from, so I went into this expecting it to be like all her previous books. I figured we would get a teeny, quirky woman and a towering broody love interest with a lot of science and angst thrown in. So I was surprised to find that wasn't the case. It was still chock-full of science bits that I didn't care about or fully understand. We still got our tall, pensive male MC, but instead of the early-2000s cringey FMC, we got Rue who was the complete opposite. She was cold and aloof and so unlike any other Hazelwood heroine I've read from, and I enjoyed it. She and Eli were both so analytical, and I liked how they showed each other the worst parts of themselves, and both stayed despite it all. I thought the smut overpowered the plot, but it was still a quick read despite not being my favorite of hers.

As a big time Ali Hazelwood fan I am sad to say that I did not enjoy this novel. In my ranking of Hazelwood books, this is on the low end and I am unfortunately very disappointed. Check & Mate, Love, Theoretically, and Bride, are all novels I’ve given 5 stars to, read multiple times, and raved about on multiple social media platforms. I love this author and her novels. I did not love this book though.

There’s a few reasons for my low rating and ranking, but here’s the gist of it (spoilers to follow):
-The novel felt disjointed in a way I can’t explain very well, but the pacing was odd and the plot and the things driving the plot just didn’t fully grip me like Hazelwood’s books normally do.
-There’s a pretty major plot hole in the way Rue grew up. I appreciate the way the author brought in food insecurity, especially for children in America, and how it’s a major problem. This just wasn’t handled well in the novel. Rue’s trauma from food insecurity and quite frankly a traumatic childhood isn’t truly tackled and reads as more of a mild attempt to give Rue a traumatic enough backstory to make her quirks understandable.
-Furthermore, food insecurity in this novel is used as a way to give Rue some depth as a character, but all it did was leave me confused and here’s why: fact 1 is that Rue grew up incredibly food insecure with a Mother who often didn’t provide the food her and her young brother needed. Fact 2 is that somehow with a neglectful mother who couldn’t be bothered to go to the grocery store, Rue was able to practice, train, and compete in competitive ice skating enough that she gets a full scholarship to a major university. How? Her Mother is working multiple jobs or sometimes no jobs, how would her Mother not only have the time to take Rue to and from practice, but also how would she have the funds to pay for practice, a coach, equipment, competitions, travel, etc.? It doesn’t make sense. That’s an expensive sport.
-There’s a lot of technical jargon used to explain patents, patent law, how PhDs work, grad student work, etc. It’s all quite confusing, especially as someone who has never done PhD work in a STEM field.
-You see on the cover how Rue looks like a thin, pretty woman but generally not curvy? Yet in the book she’s described as “round” “soft” and she has big breasts and a butt that jiggles and I’m sorry but where is that represented in the cover? Like at all? I’m getting 2000s skinny from the cover only to find out our heroine is actually a curvy girl with an undercut. I loved reading about the latter and would’ve loved to have seen that represented on the cover.

Here’s the thing though: the spice is great. Probably some of her best spice yet. The male main character is great, and he’s down BAD. I really enjoyed the two together and I enjoyed how into her he was, but there was something just off about this novel. It didn’t have the Hazelwood magic in my opinion.

This was not my favourite book by hers, but it is definitely a very enjoyable read. The content is definitely hornier and heavier than her previous books which was a good move on her part- equally daring and refreshing. This relationship relied heavily on being vulnerable with the person you love and open communication, which are two hallmarks I value in romance books. Eli is one of my favourite love interests written by Hazelwood, and I loved how this book was written from both Rue's and his POV. As always, I look forward to seeing what Hazelwood has in store as her books are a boost of serotonin.

As a longtime Ali Hazelwood fan it really pains me to write this, but...I was not a fan of this one, and was honestly disappointed by the execution. She is upfront in the first pages that this is not her typical Rom Com, but is instead more of an erotic romance with real trauma and emotional issues. I was excited for this, and to see more of what Hazelwood can offer as an author, but what she promised wasn't really what was delivered. Overarching plot arcs felt similar to past books, the emotional connections felt rushed/under-explored, and overall it lacked the depth I'd expect from a story trying to deal with such traumatic issues as childhood starvation and parentification. If you're a big Ali Hazelwood fan, I think you may still enjoy this book by virtue of it being her's (I definitely still had moments while reading where I was loving it, and couldn't put it down), but if you're new to her backlog I'd recommend starting with another story so that you can truly see what she can offer.

Thank you to Berkley for the eARC! Ali Hazelwood is one of my favorite authors and I was absolutely ecstatic for her to have not one, but two new releases this year.

Surprisingly, Not In Love feels more an outlier among her books than Bride (a genre bending romantasy with elements of mystery) or Check & Mate (a non-STEM, YA romance). The disclaimer given at the start of the book that this is isn’t exactly a typical romance novel like some of her previous offerings, but an erotic romance absolutely rings true.

All of this to say, this is Ali Hazelwood’s spiciest, most sex-positive and sex-forward novel yet, while simultaneously having the most emotional and traumatic FMC backstory of all her FMCs. The same, addictive writing style and STEM setting that as readers we’ve come to expect from Ali Hazelwood is there, but this novel is different.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend to any fan of Ali Hazelwood’s writing and particularly to anyone who has been hoping for more spice in her books. 👀

Ali Hazelwood never misses! I loved this one so much. The characters had me hooked from the start. Rue and Eli’s romance was beautiful. I loved how they communicated and genuinely seemed to care for each other.

I highly recommend this book! It also has a dual pov which is amazing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for the arc!

DNF @ 25% - both characters feel bland and almost, immediately unlikable. Weird author's note prepped for steam, but nothing has happened. Feel like this author has suffered from quantity over quality in her last few books. None of them have compared to The Love Hypothesis which was such a great debut.

my favourite Ali Hazelwood yet!

I don't think this will be everyone's favourite, but it worked for me in so many ways.

1- my dude Eli is OBSESSED with the FMC, Rue
2- despite essentially being "enemies" on either side of a complicated situation, they are never truly mean or cruel to each other
3- Rue is a fantastic, complex and truly interesting FMC
4- Eli is just a dreamboat, honestly! He is intelligent, shows interest in every aspect of Rue and is just genuinely is a nice guy
5- I love their friends

I could have kept reading about these two forever. You'll definitely want to pick this one up on release day.. maybe even take a sick day so you can read it in one sitting.

This was a saturday so well spent.

What a weird experience. Ali Hazelwood has always been hit or miss for me, and this was just a complete and total miss.

At no point did I ever feel genuine connection between our two characters that went past physical attraction. The majority of their relationship was primarily lusting over each other and sharing random traumatic childhood stories. Yes this had a side plot that was related to STEM but this was not like Hazelwood’s other STEM novels. The plot was interesting but we only spent like 10 minutes on it throughout the whole book. I wanted more STEM, more side characters, more relationship building, more anythinggg. This book was mostly focused on the physical aspect of the relationship, and I just don’t think that’s Hazelwood’s strong suit as a writer.

The Love Hypothesis and Love Theoretically are some of my favorite romance books, so I just don’t understand how this could be such a miss for me.

An emotional, tender and sexy romance by Ali Hazelwood. I found this one to be more raw than her previous books, but still with same elements of women in STEM, endearing and funny side characters, quick flirty banter and lots of chemistry. Eli and Rue were perfect for each other and their longing and pining for one another as they sorted their feelings was just exquisite. Thanks berkley and Netgalley for my copy.

This is definitely the steamiest of Ali's books, and damn she delivered! the book has a great plot / workplace drama and family relationships and all that, but the smut and the steam was pretty central - something I feel like we don't usually get from her! And it was pretty delightful, I must say. A bit kinkier than maybe my vanilla persona was used to - but fun nonetheless! I love how Ali is exploring different aspects of romance writing and expanding her influence in the genre - this is not one to be missed!

the story was pretty good, but omg the sex scenes were just not it lol. it's the same old ali hazelwood, but just more sex which is her weakest link. I did like how the main female character was sort of autistic coded and tall for once! I'm done with the hazelwood short girls.

The good people at Berkley have been very kind to me over the years, I don't think there is a Hazelwood title that I have asked for that I haven't received early. The good Dr. Prof. Hazelwood and I have been through a lot together, our journey has had some high highs and some shockingly low lows. I went into this off the highest highs delivered by the good Dr. Prof. with Check & Mate and Bride, so no one is more gagged than I am to say that this book simply did not deliver... In fact, it's quite possibly my least favorite [ full length novel from ] Ali Hazelwood to date, something I didn't think was possible given how much I dislike The Love Hypothesis.

This is the story of Rue and Eli, the first true dual POV romance from the good Dr. Prof. and while I was initially excited I have never regretted something more in my life...

To start with the good, I really appreciated the business storyline in this. That's not too much of a shock given how I've tended to enjoy the B-plot in all of Hazelwood's previous works, at least starting with Love on the Brain. The company Rue works for might get their loans bought out by the hedgefund that Eli is a part of. Simple enough. Things get slightly more complicated when the connection between this biofuel start up and the hedgefund are teased out to the reader, given what could have been just a bland reason to have two characters meet into something that had some layers and added to the tension.

Just about nothing else worked for me. In part because this book does a lot of lip service, characters often proclaim to be one way while acting in total contradiction to their stated behaviors. Take Rue and Eli's first encounter. They're initially not brought together by the acquisition of Rue's place of employment, but a dating app. When their planned one night stand is run afoul by Rue's younger brother it's revealed that Rue is a one night stand girlie and while they never actually got around to doing anything other than Eli playing the part of a knight in shining armor this will be their only encounter. It's only when Eli shows up the next day and there's an obligatory moment of the two in a lab together that that goes out the window. We don't get a series of dates so much as we get a series of sexual encounters, this is by far Hazelwood's horniest book; complete with lots of discussions of the various kings each of our characters have and the quirks that they bring into the bedroom and how best to navigate them, or in some cases prove that Rue does actually like being penetrated when it's by Eli's curative cock. There's no emotional connection here. You could say that is in part because of the way Rue chooses to express emotion, but this is a dual POV and Eli isn't giving anything either, he's just getting chapters to tease the business storyline and play the part of a guy falling first because ~fate.

There's also an examination of Rue and her younger brother's dynamic. Truly some of the worst writing in the book. We meet him under the assumption that he's a belligerent drunk hitting on Rue at the hotel bar she's meant to be meeting Eli at, it's not until after he's played the part of the good guy that we learn the man at the bar was her younger brother and not a romantic rival. This relationship doesn't come up again until later in the book when the narrative needs a reason for Rue to call Eli for help even though we just read about this man betraying her in a way that should cut deep. We do get some info on their relationship and family history; namely that they were abandoned by their father at a young age and then grew up in an unstable home raised by a mother that was either not concerned with making sure her children ate or was simply unable to ensure that. So while Rue was able to get out of that life with a figure skating scholarship and her brain her brother was left behind to continue fending for himself, apparently in ways that Rue looks down on. Understandably Rue is caught between loving her brother but wanting nothing to do with him, but she's also standing in his way? That father that abandoned them, he's dead and left them a cabin he used to own. Vince, the brother, needs the money selling the cabin would provide, Rue is uninterested and instead wants to buy out her brothers portion even though she does nothing to actually move the needle on that and instead just continues to avoid the man... It's all done so vague and coupled with other plot elements of the book it just continues this theme of "fuck you, got mine" that just did nothing for me...

Even the corporate storyline started to feel a little foolish as we got to the end of the book. Rue and Eli were never really dating, so really this element of the story has to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to creating conflict in the story because Rue and Eli don't have any sort of friction outside of it. The genesis of this conflict and some of the resulting fallout could have been seen from miles away, but watching it play out was worse than I could have imagined. Some of the Harkness supporting characters just felt so silly? In a way I could understand given their timetable why they would feel some of the way they did, but again, it was playing into this theme of "fuck you, got mine" that makes sense in the context of a business transaction, but at the same time if you were going to have that attitude it does make you question why they could not understand why the other characters had made the decision they did.

At no point was I rooting for Rue and Eli... Partially because this book didn't seem to have any heart to it. The side characters all had nothing to do, the writing felt so flat and discordant from Hazelwood's previous works. If this wasn't a rushed book it almost feels like one that had been languishing in the drafts and was dusted off for this. It doesn't help that this is the second book getting published by Hazelwood this year, and maybe if this was the only release I wouldn't think that this was as rushed as I do.

I'm not sure who exactly would be best to recommend this book to as I really don't think there's anything done here that Hazelwood hasn't already done better in some of her other works. Only if you're truly against rereading and desperate to get your hands on their next story would I say this could potentially be worth your time.