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by Ali Hazelwood (June 11, 2024) Many thanks to @berkleyromance and @prhaudio for the gifted digital and audiobook copies of Ali’s boundary-pushing new book. Below is my honest review.

Rue’s life and identity are tied up in her job as a food science engineer at Kline, a startup biotech firm. Her research is her passion; her best friend works at Kline, and its founder, Francis, is her mentor. She has never felt the pull toward romantic relationships. Hookups only and never for more than one night. There’s an app for that. When her app-based hookup with a stranger named Eli is interrupted, Rue has difficulty putting him out of her head – particularly when he shows up at Kline the next day as part of a private equity firm intent on taking over the company. Eli gets what he wants, and his reasons for wanting Kline run deep. Eli and Rue are intense rivals on opposite sides of a hostile takeover, but they can’t deny an electric chemistry to which they ultimately surrender. Sex only. No strings. The liberty they find in their non-relationship allows them to share long-hidden truths, and they struggle with their firmly-held beliefs about life, love, and friendship.

I love that Ali has been pushing boundaries and genres in her writing. Before jumping into this one, please read the author’s note, as it is NOT a rom-com. It is a story about two complex, driven people who have been hurt by those who were supposed to support them, have deep-seated trust issues, and struggle with emotional intimacy – all within the backdrop of corporate drama. I truly loved Rue & Eli and the found family they surrounded themselves with. They are messy, raw characters. If you are firmly in the closed-door/PG-13 reading space, this may not be for you, but if you’ve been thinking, “I’ve been looking for patent law and intellectual property erotica,” this is the ticket! Other things I loved: chapter titles, dual POV, highlighting food insecurity, and the pressures of being the older sibling

The audiobook version of this novel is a duet, featuring the expert narration of Callie Dalton (The Love Hypothesis) and Jason Clarke (Hopeless). Their performances are truly mesmerizing, elevating the book to a whole new level.