At my core, I'm a hater.
One sentence review: It's like, really cringe.
My boyfriend and I have been alternating choosing a book each month for us both to read and as I have been trying to read through my TBR, I chose this one. It gave us a much welcomed break from the mystery/thriller run we were on, but I would have rather kept down that rabbit hole than even opened the cover of this one.
Why would I own a book that I feared would be so cringe, you might ask? I loved the Love Hypothesis. I thought, though it has it's cringe moments and Ali Hazelwood's personal obsession with Adam Driver is kind of disgusting to me (especially to then write a book with Adam Driver as the main character and name the main girl 'Oli,' okay Ali, get real), it was kind of cute. While it went a bit quick into the fake romance, I bought into it and ate it up. So, if you're looking for a good romance, go read The Love Hypothesis and hard skip this one.
Here's the synopsis for you all. <3
Also, going forward, I'm going to be talking about the whole book with spoilers.
Our trope: enemies to lover (I guess), except the feud is only one-sided with Bee. She thinks Levi has hated her since this proposed project in grad school where he said he couldn't work with her and she was like 'oh he hates me,' but he's actually been in love with her while she was with someone else (surprise!)
Take my sarcasm with a grain of salt, I can usually surrender to a romance where you know they really like each other the entire time, but this brings us to my biggest gripe with the book:
neither of the characters are likable.
Bee is insufferable. She gives this 'I'm not like other girls, I like Star Wars' energy while also speaking like somebody parodying a millennial woman. If you ever read AH's GoodReads biography, you'll get what I mean. Over the top quirky to the point where you're gagging reading it because it can't be real, nobody actually talks like that.
Ali Hazelwood does, so here we go with yet another self-insert story.
Bee brags about her piercings where she'll be like, 'He wouldn't like a girl like me with pink hair, a septum piercing, and tattoos.' Tying back to my 'I'm not like other girls' energy.
Potentially Bee's worst characteristic? She reminds you how tiny she is almost every other chapter. She's so tiny, petite, teeny weeny, so cute small lil baby.
And Levi? Levi is a copy/paste of Adam from the Love Hypothesis, just somehow less likable. He's standoff-ish because he's nervous around Bee, but he's like 30 so let's get real here. And it's not like a cute nervous energy; he doesn't talk to her. They don't talk to each other until maybe 55% into the book.
Back to the size thing, whenever they're physically close to each other in Act Two, we're reminded of how he is a big, strong, "mountain of a man" and she is so tiny teeny petite constantly. Even in terms of their intimacy.
When they do start talking amicably, there are three sex scenes that don't make you feel good reading them because you don't really them individually and they have done nothing to make you root for them together, so you're just like :-)?
To fill in the rest of the story you missed from me:
- They are working on a project together that involved NASA helmets and there is some back and forth on the success of the project and something bad happens during their first trial, but that's how they are reunited after grad school.
- Someone brings up that Levi has a child at some point and Bee is aware that Levi could have a wife and kid, but instead of communicating with him in the first 55% of the book at all about it, you learn that it's his ex-girlfriend's kid (not with Levi) and he's close with them because her partner passed away and Levi was good friends with the partner.
- Bee's ex comes up a lot in the story. Tim used to collaborate with Levi on science projects and he ended up cheating on Bee with her best friend. Naturally, Levi and Bee go to a conference and run into Tim.
- There is an insane & unnecessary gun scene at the end that made me LAUGH out loud because Levi saves Bee from a bullet? It was wild in the worst possible way.
- Bee brings Rocio with her as her assistant and Rocio is Mexican. They're in Texas and Rocio is 'goth' and keeps bringing up La Llorona and the writing gives the energy that Ali Hazelwood has never met a Mexican girl before in her life.
- Ali herself uses the term STEMinist, but any time Bee has a problem in the workplace, Levi flies in to save her.
- Speaking of unnecessary, wait for the dinner scene with his parents because she has nothing to do with anything and stands up to his dad for him. She thinks she's making this big stand for him, but it just gave me second-hand embarrassment. She's known him for five minutes and she's yelling at his dad for how he treats Levi.
If you want to try an Ali Hazelwood novel, start and stop at the Love Hypothesis. But there are SO MANY better authors doing great things in the genre you can spend your time on instead of this one.
Hard zero/5 stars over here.
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