🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 3.7/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Not in Love yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
Another Ali Hazelwood, another STEM romance with hidden pining and a slow burn that takes its sweet time getting anywhere. This one adds a corporate revenge plot to the mix and it’s more interesting than it sounds.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
The Setup
Rue hooks up roughly once a quarter — one and done, no repeats. She had an app date scheduled with Eli Killgore when he showed up and found her being harassed by a man named Vincent outside a bar. He stepped in, the night got complicated, and by the end of it she’d decided she didn’t want to go through with the hookup anymore. She was too rattled, and he was very understanding, but he insists on staying to make sure Vincent is gone before she leaves. You can tell he has strong protective instincts.
The next day she shows up to work and finds out someone has bought out a loan connected to her company. She looks up and sees Eli walking in with the group of people behind the takeover. He works for Harkness, a company he and his partners started essentially as a revenge project against Florence, Rue’s boss and closest mentor.
Neither of them is happy about the timing. Rue is angry. Eli seems unbothered, tells her he doesn’t see why this changes anything between them. She disagrees, but clearly wants more.
The Revenge Plot
Eli and his partners were Florence’s grad students. They had a breakthrough two years into their research, went on a trip, and came back to find Florence had quit the university. She had been fighting with the university over who owned the work and decided it was cleaner to cut her students out entirely and minimize their involvement. The press got involved — ironically something Rue was very proud of Florence for, not knowing the actual story. The students were asked to leave the university because keeping them around would have made the school look even worse. Florence walked away with the biofuel patent. Her grad students walked away with nothing.
Starting a wildly successful company specifically to come back and buy out your mentor’s loan is honestly a pretty satisfying form of revenge. Well planned, and it turned into a legitimate business that made good money and helped companies. They really seemed to enjoy what they ended up doing.
Florence
Florence has been presenting herself to Rue as a mentor, a friend, someone who built something meaningful. And Rue is proud of the work they’ve done together. But things start not adding up. Florence tells Rue not to research the Harkness people or talk to them. She claims she doesn’t know them, then a deposition turns up showing she admitted to meeting them. She throws her ex-husband under the bus when confronted, blaming the whole patent situation on him. She completely defends her own actions while never quite acknowledging what she actually did to those students.
And then Rue finds out Florence has been trying to sell Rue’s own patent. A patent Rue believed she owned outright. The contract, it turns out, isn’t valid because Florence never had the board sign it, even though she promised she would.
Eli and Rue
They circle each other for a long time. Rue doesn’t do repeats, so why start? But then they do, and Eli eventually gets her to agree that they’ll keep seeing each other until one of them stops wanting to. They share deep personal truths as a kind of currency between them, which is one of the more interesting dynamics Hazelwood has built in any of her books. Rue talks about food insecurity growing up, stealing food and money to bring home for her brother, eating it as fast as possible so their mom wouldn’t ask where it came from. Eli listens to everything she says and absorbs it all.
Her estranged brother Vincent — the man from outside the bar — keeps resurfacing. He wants their late father’s cabin sold, really he wants the money from the sale. Rue desperately does not want to sell it; it’s one of the few places she associates with good memories. He shows up at her apartment trying to break in. She doesn’t know who to call, certainly not the police because she is still trying to protect him, so she calls Eli. He comes, no questions asked.
The Ending
When the confrontation with Florence finally happens, Eli goes to her office to make a deal that undercuts much of his team’s bargaining power. Instead of taking the company entirely, they leave Florence with five percent and keep her on as CEO. It is not the outcome Eli or any of the Harkness crew originally planned, but it protects Rue’s patent and gets Florence out of her life professionally.
Then Eli tells Rue he loves her. Her reaction is blank. He takes that poorly and leaves.
One of his business partners tracks Rue down afterward and gives her a payment plan his lawyers drafted with her brother, giving her a way to buy the cabin from him over time. Eli quietly arranged this. He knew her life had just imploded, she was losing her job, losing Florence, desperately trying to hold onto the one piece of her past she still wanted. But he made sure she got it, even when she couldn’t trust him enough to let him say he loved her.
She eventually sees the error of her ways and finds him to tell him she loves him too.
Best Part of This Book
Even when everything fell apart, Eli was still thinking about Rue. He made sure she kept her patent. He sorted the cabin situation without being asked. He did everything he could to make sure she was taken care of, even after she looked at him like he was about to betray her. That’s the kind of quiet, consistent showing up that makes a love interest actually worth rooting for.
Worst Part of This Book
Rue not being able to trust Eli. He spent the entire book showing her who he was, making every possible effort to prove he had her back, and even at the end when he asked her to give him just a little time and trust him, she still couldn’t do it. It was frustrating to watch because he had genuinely earned it and she just could not get there. Burned before or not, this was completely undeserved.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥🔥🔥 — Consistent heat throughout. Rue doesn’t enjoy penetrative sex and the book handles this matter-of-factly without making it a big dramatic thing, which is refreshing.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Satisfied with where they ended up. Frustrated by how long it took Rue to get there, but that’s consistent with who she is as a character so it’s hard to call it a flaw exactly.
Would I Reread It?
No.
Who Is This For
Ali Hazelwood fans who want more of her STEM romance formula with a corporate revenge subplot added to the mix. Readers who love a hero who shows up consistently and quietly rather than with grand dramatic gestures.
Where to Get
📖 Physical Book
Amazon | Bookshop.org
📱 Ebook
Amazon
🎁 New to Audible? Get 3 months free (US)
🎁 New to Libro.fm? Get 2 free audiobooks
Ready for more from LD? Find them here