Not In Love by Ali Hazelwood

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that I discovered Ali Hazelwood much later than everyone else.

While the rest of the internet was obsessing over her books years ago, I’m only now making my way through her backlist, one STEM romance at a time. The upside to arriving late is that there’s no waiting for the next release. Every time I finish one, there’s another sitting on my library’s shelf waiting for me.

Most recently, that led me to Not in Love.

If you’ve read any of Hazelwood’s previous novels, you’ll recognize many of the elements that have made her such a popular romance author. Once again, we’re in the world of science and technology, where brilliant people with questionable communication skills somehow manage to complicate what should probably be fairly straightforward romantic situations. It’s familiar territory, but Hazelwood has developed a style that’s easy to settle into.

This time, though, she turns the temperature up a bit.

Her books have never exactly been shy about romance, but Not in Love definitely leans further into the more explicit side than some of her earlier work. Whether that’s a positive or a negative will depend entirely on what you’re looking for in a romance novel. Readers who enjoy open door romance will probably be perfectly happy here, while those who preferred the lighter tone of some of her previous books may be a little surprised.

One of my biggest frustrations with the enemies-to-lovers trope is how often it relies on one person being genuinely unpleasant for a large portion of the story. We’ve all read those romances where one character spends two hundred pages behaving terribly before suddenly experiencing an emotional breakthrough in the final act. The expectation is that one grand gesture somehow erases everything that came before it.

I’ve never completely bought into that formula.

It often feels less like watching two people fall in love and more like waiting for someone to become a different person entirely.

Not in Love takes a different approach, and I appreciated that.

The conflict between the characters isn’t driven by cruelty or unnecessary meanness. Instead, they’re allowed to be complicated people navigating difficult circumstances without either of them becoming cartoonishly unlikeable. As the story unfolds, their understanding of each other changes, but neither character fundamentally transforms into someone else just to make the relationship work.

Rather than asking the characters to abandon who they were, the novel asks them to become more honest about who they’ve been all along. The relationship develops because they begin seeing each other more clearly, not because one person suddenly turns into the perfect romantic lead halfway through the book.

Usually, in this kind of romance, I end up quietly hoping one character raises their standards instead. Here, I genuinely wanted things to work out because I liked the people involved, flaws and all. Their personalities remained consistent throughout the novel, and the emotional growth felt more like increased self awareness than complete reinvention.

If I were ranking her books, Not in Love would probably settle comfortably somewhere in the middle. I enjoyed my time with it, and I’m glad I read it, but it never quite reached the level of emotional investment or charm that I’ve found in some of her strongest work.

For me, it lands squarely in solid three star territory.

That’s not meant as faint praise, either.

Three stars often gets interpreted as disappointment, but for me it usually means exactly what it sounds like. I had a good time. I don’t regret picking it up. I’d recommend it to the right reader. I just probably won’t be thinking about it months from now.

Not every book needs to become an all time favorite. Sometimes you simply want an entertaining story with engaging characters, a little drama, and enough chemistry to keep the pages turning over the course of a weekend.

This book absolutely delivers that.

One thing I also appreciate about Hazelwood‘s writing is that even when one of her books isn’t my favorite, I still find myself wanting to read the next one. There’s a consistency to her voice that’s comforting. You generally know what kind of experience you’re signing up for, even as each story introduces new characters and slightly different dynamics.

So yes, I’ll almost certainly be reading the next installment.

You’ll probably hear about that one here before too long.

If you’re already an Ali Hazelwood fan, especially if you enjoyed The Love Hypothesis or Love on the Brain, I think you’ll find plenty to like in Not in Love. Just know going in that it’s a little steamier than some of her previous books. If that’s your thing, you’ll probably consider it a bonus. If not, it’s worth knowing ahead of time.

And if, like me, you’re somehow still catching up on Hazelwood’s catalog years after everyone else, don’t worry.