A Surprisingly Messy, Forbidden, Office Romance in STEM from Ali Hazelwood
Not in Love
Contemporary Romance
Berkley
June 11, 2024
ebook, paperback, audiobook
400
A Hall of Fame LibraryReads Pick!
A forbidden, secret affair proves that all’s fair in love and science—from New York Times bestselling author Ali Hazelwood.
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.
The world was a constant, full-on maelstrom, and my emotions were the one thing I could govern.
Ali Hazelwood’s latest release, Not in Love, has surprised me. Apparently 2024 is the year for surprises from Hazelwood with her paranormal romance debut, Bride, which released in February. Not in Love is a return to Contemporary Romance, but instead of the lighthearted quirkiness of romantic comedy, Hazelwood has given readers a grittier romance with characters who are messy in their own imperfect way, which made me love them even more.
Not in Love is the romance set in the biotech sector of the science community. Dr. Rue Sibert is using her skills as a biotech engineer to research new ways to preserve and prolong the shelf life of different foods. This research is near and dear to Rue due to a whole plethora of reasons but mostly due to the lack of nutrition and access to foods that she had during her childhood. Rue works for Kline, a company started by friend and colleague, but which has now been acquired by the Harkness group—a company that seems determined to make Kline shake in their lab coats despite many assurances.
He was her servant. Anything she wanted, Eli would do it. He had to slide his hands behind his back, trap them between himself and the wall, just to stop himself from touching and gripping and taking.
Wouldn’t you know it? Our very own Eli Killgore is part of Harkness. In Texas with his own colleagues, Eli is gobsmacked to learn that Rue is none other than the woman he met through a hook-up app. The very same one who ghosted him after he white knighted her out of a potentially dangerous situation with her brother. Eli can’t help but be drawn to the mystery that is the quiet, and enigmatic Rue. Neither Rue nor Eli can seem to stay away from the other, effectively putting each other at risk during this tumultuous time in each of their careers. Truly, one of the reasons why I adored Not in Love so much is just how completely gone for Rue Eli becomes. At times I thought “oh, this man just lives to be in Rue’s orbit,” and I love that for Rue so much.
It is in this dynamic that Ali Hazelwood lets her characters shine. As Rue and Eli spend more time together, they share small pieces of their truths—the things that anyone else would judge, pity, empathize, but for them it becomes currency to keep their relationship on a mutual playing field. Both Rue and Eli have issues to work through, trust to earn, and ultimately intimacy to share. I love that Hazelwood isn’t afraid to show us different facets of her writing. Not in Love is every bit as addictive as her romantic comedies perhaps even more so with how invested I became with Rue and Eli’s HEA.
He sat back, assessing me calmly. I couldn’t shake the needling sensation that he understood something fundamental, something nuclear about us that I could not yet accept.
Jes is a self-proclaimed bookworm, who recently moved from the PNW back to the Midwest. When her nose isn’t in a book, she’s spending time with her husband, two kids, and her three fur babies, or exploring the globe. She also firmly believes that you should start the day with coffee, and end the day in bed with a good book.
