Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood

★★★★☆ 

Loathe to Love You is a collection of 3 romance novellas, each featuring a brilliant young, single woman in STEM who meets and falls in love with a guy in some variation on the enemies-to-lovers trope. In Under One Roof, Mara inherits half of a house that comes with an irritating but hot roommate. Stuck With You traps Sadie and Erik, who work at rival engineering firms, in an elevator to work out their differences, while Below Zero takes Hannah and her scientific rival to a remote Arctic research station.

I’m not usually a fan of novellas – I generally like more character development in my reads than shorter works typically offer. However, despite the formulaic nature of these stories, this collection worked for me. The themed storylines made character development less critical, and the format allowed Hazelwood to include three times the blush-inducing steamy scenes of one of her full-length novels. The whole collection was easy to consume in one setting. I enjoyed that the storylines connected. 

I would love to see some variety – particularly in body type – in my next read by Hazelwood. Hazelwood is inclusive in many ways with her characters, including references to different sexual orientations and backgrounds. However, she’s pretty stereotypical when it comes to the body types of the male and female love interests. All four of the women I’ve read about in her novels so far are described as small and lithe and able to be picked up and carried by their love interests. The men are always tall and broad-chested with builds like lumberjacks. It’s disappointing to see a writer who clearly understands the importance of bashing the stereotype that “women can’t do science” play into them when it comes to body types. Tall and/or curvy women and thin guys with average builds are sexy, too.

Up next on my reading list by Hazelwood is Love on the Brain. We shall see if it follows the exact same formula as her other works or if she mixes it up at all.

My review of The Love Hypothesis is available here.