Angela's Reviews > Not in Love

I have a lot of issues with Not in Love.

First and foremost, the leads. Rue has the personality of a wet rag. Her “humor” falls flat, and she honestly doesn’t really have anything going on to make her interesting. Cool job? Yes, but we don’t even really get into it. She claims to have all this massive baggage, but again, nothing that insane. Yes, a lot of her story is sad, but I think it’s so poorly delivered that I didn’t care. I didn’t feel for her and I definitely couldn’t connect either. Eli is a bit better, but again rather dull. I often found myself wondering why he liked Rue so much, besides her looks, because he speaks of those often. I wasn’t sure why he did. She wasn’t fun, funny, charming, or has this amazing personality that pulls you in. I also didn’t really like the set up to how they met. Felt a bit off.

Now to the plot. I think the whole Kline vs Harkness thing is so poorly written. It builds (barely) and when it comes full circle it is a massive letdown. I wanted more of a… idk fight?! It was just so anticlimactic. It’s LITERALLY what the whole story is built around and yet has no real foundation. I find it hard to care about this book's plot or characters because I don’t feel like Ali cared about them either.

There are a lot of other little things I could spend literal days going on about, but I end it with this. The spice. Yes, some of it is pretty good, BUT I can’t even believe I’m about to say this…….. ……. ……. BUT GOD at some points it went on too long! WITH NOTHING REALLY HAPPENING. There’s a part of the book where they spend 20% of it at one spot, just hooking up, and I’ve never been so bored. Was begging for it to just end.

I think Not in Love is a great title for this book… because that’s exactly how I felt about it once I was done.

1.5