Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood – a Review

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Description:
STEMinist novellas featuring a trio of engineers and their loves in loathing—with a special bonus chapter!

Under One Roof
An environmental engineer discovers that scientists should never cohabitate when she finds herself stuck with the roommate from hell—a detestable big-oil lawyer who won’t leave the thermostat alone.

Stuck with You
A civil engineer and her nemesis take their rivalry—and love—to the next level when they get stuck in a New York elevator.

Below Zero
A NASA aerospace engineer’s frozen heart melts as she lies injured and stranded at a remote Arctic research station and the only person willing to undertake the dangerous rescue mission is her longtime rival.

Review:

Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood are three novellas that are part of her STEMinist collection.  Since I have read each of the novellas separately, I will note the highlights of each short story.  There is a bonus chapter at the end, which I will detail more. Mara, Sadie and Hannah were best friends, with each being scientists in different fields.

Under One Roof
Mara is an environmental engineer, who learns that scientists should never cohabitate; especially when she finds herself with a roommate from hell.  They seemed to have great chemistry, but things fell apart quickly.  Did they finally get past the bad start?

Stuck With You
Sadie, our heroine, is a scientist, who works for a new firm producing safer products.  Within the same building, another firm is very successful, making things harder for Sadie and her boss. One evening Sadie, met Erik and it turned into a one-night stand, which she learns the following day that he is one of the founders of the other company.  Sadie feels that Erik betrayed her, when she finds out they took one of their customers away. What follows is a quick story line, with POV’s switching back and forth from the one-night stand and them trapped in the elevator.

 Below Zero
In Below Zero, Hannah is the lead. Hannah is an aerospace engineer for NASA, and she loves her job.  She met Ian, early on, discovering how hot he was; but all she wanted was sex, no dating, and Ian just stepped away; since he was interested in dating and getting to know Hannah. What follows is a quick story line, that was a bit funny, somewhat zany, and at times fun. 

Bonus Chapter
Mara and Liam are married, and when Liam gets home from work, he is thrilled to learn that Mara is pregnant.  He is surprised that she told Sadie and Hannah before telling him first.  Mara tries to explain that he was in court all day, and she couldn’t resist telling her best friends.  Liam wasn’t too happy to find out that their significant others (Erik & Ian) also knew about her pregnancy.

We get to see Sadie, who is married to Erik, argue with Erik’s brother, about keeping their cat.  Kind of funny.  Ian seeing how happy their friends are, pushes Hannah to marry him.  This bonus chapter was a quick and nice addition, allowing us to see how all three couples were doing.

Hazelwood is great at upping the heat level and the build-up.  I have enjoyed Ali Hazelwood’s previous full novels, but was not into these novellas. These novellas were zany and fun, but Hazelwood’s full-length novels are so much better. 

Reviewed by Barb

Copy provided by Publisher