Wow, this was terrible. I strongly suspected it was going to be bad, which is why I didn’t pick it up until now. I’ve been reading Loathe to Love You as my late-night-I-can’t-fall-asleep book and I’m sorry, but this was really trash. Not just smutty trash, but like… garbage.

Apparently there is a point of diminishing returns on Ali Hazelwood’s writing. I still loved TLH for the STEM setting and because it was something new, but Hazelwood just keeps writing the same story over and over again. Apparently this is just her early works fan fiction, re-written and published, and it shows folks! There is absolutely nothing happening in this 112 page story. Mara’s stream of consciousness narration is the stupid kind of girly-quirky that I hate, Liam has the personality of a boiled potato, and together they have zero chemistry. This woman is an engineer? Let’s see some of her engineering world rather than just telling us about sexist male engineers. SHOW ME.

I don’t think Mara leaves the house throughout the entire novella, and since there’s really no slow burn tension, I was hoping Hazelwood would just commit to the smut at the very least (I feel like that’s why this was written?). But then I read the smut scene and OMG you guys! It’s so bad and honestly, kind of non-consensual. It was cringe-inducing, I wish I could erase it from my memory. Also, is Liam ace? is he demi? You can’t just have him say “I don’t like sex” in the middle of sex and then not explore that at all. Like, at the very least, Mara needs to check in with him emotionally. They could both use a reminder about what consent looks like.

Honestly, this was a 1-star red for me, but I save that for truly offensive books, so it can have 1.5 stars. I don’t think I will be reading the other two novellas, but who knows. Ali Hazelwood has some kind of women-in-stem power over me and I keep thinking it will be better.