Not in love
By ali hazelwood
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.
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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.
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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.
★★★★★
Tropes
my review
Ali Hazelwood’s books just haven’t been hitting the same recently 😩
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Between this book and Deep End it feels like there is so much emphasis on the spice that the actual plot and chemistry of the characters is lost.
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Especially with this one. There was almost zero chemistry between Eli and Rue. Even the spicy chapters felt so clinically written it was almost weird to read. Where was the tension? Where were the stakes? On Eli’s side it was very insta lovey. On Rue’s side she seemed to almost never care about anything. I get that she is written to be awkward and very unemotional but it almost made her come across robotic and dry.
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I liked Eli a lot, especially his dynamic with his friends. Those scenes ended up saving this book for me. Honestly, I probably would have DNF’d it if not for my hopefulness in Problematic Summer Romance.
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Add-on thought: The switching between first and third person made this book very weird to read. Rue’s POV was in first person but Eli’s POV was third person. It was borderline confusing switching between POVs and I honestly would have rather he just stick with one POV in First or Third person.
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