Genre: Romance
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 400
Release Date: June 11, 2024
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.
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.
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.
Not in Love is Hazelwood’s best and spiciest work to date. The novel follows Rue and Eli on opposite sides of a hostile takeover fighting their intense attraction to each other. Honestly, Not in Love will definitely be making my favourite books of 2024.
Rue and Eli’s chemistry is fire hot. Their attraction to each other was immediate and the subsequent angst was delicious. Rue and Eli’s personalities and social tendencies complimented each other with Eli being the more outgoing of the two.
Not in Love is a he falls first forbidden romance and I loved every second of it. Eli became obsessed with Rue in all the best ways.
Not in Love is Hazelwood’s least STEM focused novel in that while Rue works in STEM, her job, though the catalyst of the novel, takes a backseat to Rue and Eli’s developing feelings/relationship more so than her previous novels.
Not in Love also touched on themes of food insecurity and difficult family dynamics that didn’t feel shoehorned into the novel. Instead, Hazelwood offered a nuanced look at food insecurity and its aftereffects.
Overall, Not in Love is Hazelwood’s spiciest novel yet but it’s also her best. The characters’ chemistry and angst are both fire hot and so thick you could cut it with a knife.
*** I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Will you be reading Not in Love?
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