Review: Two Can Play by Ali Hazelwood

Name: Two Can Play
Series: Stand Alone
Author: Ali Hazelwood
Publisher: Sphere
Format: Kindle Edition
Genres: Adult, Contemporary Romance
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Rating:

Synopsis: Goodreads
Viola Bowen has the chance of a to design a video game based on her all-time favorite book series. The only problem? Her co-lead is Jesse F-ing Andrews, aka her archnemesis. Jesse has made it abundantly clear over the years that he wants nothing to do with her—and Viola has no idea why.

When their bosses insist a wintery retreat is the perfect team-building exercise, Viola can’t think of anything worse. Being freezing cold in a remote mountain lodge knowing Jesse is right next door? No, thank you.

But as the snow piles on, Viola discovers there’s more to Jesse than she knew, and heat builds in more ways than one.

Review:

I haven’t read Ali Hazelwood before, I don’t believe, though I do have a number of her books on my kindle – so maybe one day! I’m in a bit of a reading slump or at least heading towards one pretty quickly; my go to advice for avoiding the slump is switching genres. So, I put my fantasy and romantasy’s down and picked up this short contemporary romance about video game designers…

I had a fun time with this! I didn’t expect a like ‘snowed in’ type of storyline, but essentially the company Viola works for has a rivalry with the company that Jesse works for – but both have been asked to work together on a Limerence 3… So, they have to put their differences aside which is a hard ask, so the company’s go together on a team retreat in a cold, remote mountain lodge… with skiing, movie nights and team dinners! Whilst they aren’t actually snowed in, they are stuck together because of the contract they’re trying to win, which is what I meant by the type of story line we got. I enjoyed it though!

This was just a fun book! Both our main characters are lead designers in their teams and so kind of lead the charge on making this work for everyone. I appreciated seeing that! But then when the romance between them began it felt very much like a whirlwind (I mean, this was literally only a couple days) but I was cheering for them by the end of it. Even if it felt fast.

I found myself really interested in the story of Two Can Play and if it was a longer story I’d have probably loved it more! But, that being said, if it was longer it would have probably just meant we got an annoying third act break up… So, I am torn on whether or not I will be picking up more of Ali’s contemporary romances, or if I’ll just try and get into her paranormal romances… though The Love Hypothesis is still calling to me… so maybe I’ll prove myself wrong ha.

All in all, a 4 star rating for this fun shorter story!

“It’s an ode to the enduring power of love. To wanting, and to the way the feeling can survive for the longest time. Even without having.”

Reading With Tyler