Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood: A Book Review

Note: This review is spoiler free except or the underlined parts
Book: Love on the Brain
Author: Ali Hazelwood
Genre: Contemporary
Age: For readers 16 and up 
Rating: 3.5/5

Every single book Ali Hazelwood writes is lowkey the same 😑 I LOVED the Love Hypothesis. It was cute. Funny. The perfect summer read. Then came those three eye-bleaching novellas that were the same story cut and paste but in a different font. I still gave her the benefit of the doubt. I was SO excited for Love on the Brain and honestly that’s all on me because I know better than to go into a book with high expectations because I know I’ll be let down 😕 

What I didn’t like: 

Nothing New: 
Ali Hazelwood has a formulaic template for each book that she CONSTANTLY repeats.

Exhibit A: I saw every plot twist coming in the first 75 pages. SPOILERS UNDERLINED: For each of the characters in the Love Hypothesis, there is an equivalent character in Love on the Brain. Bathroom guy=Shmac. The mysterious guy that is actually the MC’s love of her life but she will not know until later.  Tom Benton= Guy. By the second interaction with Guy, I figured out he would be Tom Benton 2.0. Also his name gave it away. Guys are ALWAYS red flags. This dude’s name is quite literally “Guy”. Enough said.

Exhibit B: Every. Single. Male. Character. IS TALLER THAN 6 FEET IN ALL OF ALI HAZELWOOD’S BOOKS. Do we live in a world of giants? Do guys under 6’4 not exist?? 


Bee’s Idiocy: 

Levi: “I’m driving you back to the cemetery and feeding you to the coyotes.”
Me: THANK THE LORDS. Doing us all a favor honestly.

Exhibit A: How can a person so smart be so incredibly dense?? Bee did everything in her power to remain stubborn in the fact that Levi hated her. Ali Hazelwood kept inserting lines like “He hates me! I can’t believe he’s being so nice to me today tho!! Even though he hates me”. Minor Spoilers: He literally dropped everything he was doing and brought a ladder to a cemetery to save Bee the second he got a phone call from her. But sure! He definitely hates you!! 
Exhibit B: And the make matters worse Bee would say “We’re archenemies” like every two pages and I just wanted to 🤠 🔫
If I had a nickel for the amount of times Bee said “I know you hate me but thanks for being so oddly nice to me,” I’d be rich. 
Archenemies? Are you serious? Girl, this isn’t middle school 😐  Ali Hazelwood needs to learn that you can’t will an enemies to lovers relationship to appear out of thin air. He obviously did not hate her. Reminded me a lot of the Catalina-Aaron plotline in the Spanish Love Deception. Boooooo 👎 
Exhibit C: This stupid mofo kept hearing 2 seconds of each conversation and then jumping to the stupidest conclusions after. LIKE PLEASE LISTEN TO THE FULL CONVO AT LEAST?! And then everytime she confronted Levi with the made up conclusion she came to, she wouldn’t let him speak. She kept interrupting with accusatory remarks everytime Levi opened his mouth. 

Forced Interactions: I was already rolling my eyes at the cemetery scene but then the stupid conference scene came up and I just couldn’t– there is only so many forced interactions I can take before combusting from annoyance. Minor spoilers: Isn’t there two lower officers that could go spy on the other company? It doesn’t make sense for the project leaders to commit the espionage when their project is in a critical, time sensitive place. Kaylee and Roció could’ve gone instead.

Levi: While he did sort of redeem himself in the second half of the book, he was a jerk in the first half. Everytime she even talked to him he would always close him eyes like he couldn’t stand the look of her and he kept saying: “Please… email me,” like he couldn’t stand to hear her voice for a second later. This man COULD NOT communicate for the life of him. It was very annoying. Like hello? You have a mouth for a reason.
MINOR SPOILERS: Ik ik it’s because he liked her and the thought of seeing her was too much blah blah. They are both co-leads in a professional setting. If he has to restrain himself enough to have a normal conversation with his co-lead, then that’s an issue. How does he expect a NASA project to be successful if he can’t even have a 2 minute conversation with her?

Also, everytime Levi said “We’re working on it”,  I wanted to punch the nearest thing. 👨🏻‍💻🤛

Miscommunication/ Sabotage Trope: I’m not kidding when I say that I think my BP skyrocketed when Bee couldn’t get her equipment. The sabotage/miscommunication trope always make me so frustrated I HATE IT. 


Things I liked: 

There just wasn’t anything that stood out about this book. The writing was good. But the characters were eh, the romance was alright and the only aspects of the plot I liked was the NASA related scenes. 


Overall the book was fine. Nothing special but nothing horrible either. 

​