Ok, Ali and I are six books deep now so I feel like we’re pretty well acquainted at this stage. 

 

Not in Love is a fairly big departure from her usual work and as always, I have some THOUGHTS… 

 

Firstly, I love to see Hazelwood exploring her creativity and the boundaries of the genre with her latest works. Both Bride and Not in Love are very very different from her usual style and honestly, I am here for it. 

 

The book opens with a letter to the reader from Hazelwood, explaining that the book is quite tonally different and leans more towards erotic romance, so I was eager to find out what that would mean. 

 

I’m going to break this review down into three parts: characters, plot and execution, because I think they all deserve a bit of solo attention. 

I LOVED the characters in Not in Love. In fact, I think they might be my favourite of all her characters ever?? Or maybe it’s just because for once, the MMC had a fully fleshed out and developed storyline which has always been one of my issues with Hazelwood in her previous work. Eli was so great and he could have carried the entire story on his own, I loved the chapters from his perspective.
 
I also liked the MFC Rue, mainly for the fact that again, for once, she actually felt materially different from all Hazelwood’s other female leads and not just the same character with a different name.
 
I loved that she knew herself and her needs, wasn’t afraid to advocate for her desires and didn’t make stupid nonsensical decisions like some of the previous female leads. She actually felt hyper-intelligent and every action supported that.
 
The friends in the surrounding circles were also fantastic and they each felt quite well-rounded with the exception of Hark, who I felt had some unresolved tension at the end and it was quite weird that he just disappeared off the page about three quarters of the way in ??? Anyway..
 
 - Plot

For once there was no stupid nonsensical misunderstanding between the MMC and MFC!! They both behaved like intelligent adults!! Yay! But I will say this story was a bit of a slow burn for me and the first 20% or so was not as engaging as usual. Typically my experience with Hazelwood’s book is they come crashing out the gates with a roaring start, sag in the middle and then rush to tie up the loose threads at the end. This one was different. It was a bit slow and confusing at the start but it found its feet by the midway point.

Without spoiling anything, the ending just left a little something to be desired for me. I don’t know what it is but it just didn’t hit me in the feels or have the huge climactic pay off that I would have liked.

- Execution

The only reason I want to speak to execution specifically is that this novel differs from Hazelwood’s usual style in that it shifts between two perspectives: Eli and Rue. 

I enjoyed this change and found it definitely added some interest, but I actually wound up feeling like it may have been better written entirely from Eli’s perspective as he was definitely the more compelling of the two characters. In contrast to Eli’s chapters, Rue fell a little flat at times,
 
I also wonder if part of the tension was lost in the dual-perspective approach because nothing was left to guess, we knew exactly how both characters were thinking and feeling the whole time.
  
Soooooo overall, 3.75 rounded up to 4 imo. The plot and execution is what brought it down for me but I did love the characters. Also, I always genuinely enjoy the shit out of all of Ali Hazelwood’s books and I will read every single one of them until I die.