Two Can Play - Ali Hazelwood

49%

07.04.26

Hazelwood is a very engaging writer on a sentence level but 'a couple clear up a misunderstanding and then have lots of sex' is not a plot. With no conflict nor any character development, it just wasn't all that interesting.

Check and Mate - Ali Hazelwood

57%

06.02.26

You can tell from the title that this is ridiculous in almost every way but Hazelwood is good at what she does and somehow it's still cute and engaging and relatively unpredictable (and quite educational about chess) if you don't think too carefully about the Cinderella fantasy of it all or the disappointingly flat ending.

Hot for Slayer - Ali Hazelwood

n/a

25.09.25

Fun, and sneakily clever, short story/novella, in which much symbolic use is made of penetration by stakes and steel.

Bride - Ali Hazelwood

 66%

18.10.24

Ali Hazelwood is The Current Thing so I thought I'd give this a go. Romantasy isn't her usual genre and in many ways this read like a very good satire of the slightly problematic 'fated mate' trope, improved by the heroine being a feisty vampire instead of the usual passive girl-next-door. The sex was overdone and the twists (such as they were) telescoped but it was hugely entertaining, with an engaging tone of voice and non-stop action - other writers should take note.