Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood – A Summer Read That Didn’t Quite Sizzle

Not my favorite Hazelwood, but her charm and side characters still shine.

Synopsis

What is wrong meets what feels right in this romance set in Italy by the New York Times bestselling author of Deep End.

Maya Killgore is twenty-three and still in the process of figuring out her life.

Conor Harkness is thirty-eight, and Maya cannot stop thinking about him.

It’s such a cliché, it almost makes her heart implode: older man and younger woman; successful biotech guy and struggling grad student; brother’s best friend and the girl he never even knew existed. As Conor loves to remind her, the power dynamic is too imbalanced. Any relationship between them would be problematic in too many ways to count, and Maya should just get over him. After all, he has made it clear that he wants her gone from his life.

But not everything is as it seems—and clichés sometimes become plot twists.

When Maya’s brother decides to get married in Taormina, she and Conor end up stuck together in a romantic Sicilian villa for over a week. There, on the beautiful Ionian coast, between ancient ruins, delicious foods, and natural caves, Maya realizes that Conor might be hiding something from her. And as the destination wedding begins to erupt out of control, she decides that a summer fling might be just what she needs—even if it’s a problematic one.

Review

3 stars

I confess that this is my least favorite of Ali Hazelwood.

Maybe her plot and characters feel repetitive to me? Or maybe it was something else?

What is Problematic Summer Romance?

As the synopsis is saying, the story revolves around some main tropes:

-age gap;

-brother’s best friend;

-millionaire CEO versus underpaid heroine.

In more details: the story takes place in Sicily where Eli and Rue have gathered close friends for one week to celebrate their wedding. But there is a twist as their wedding begins to feel as it’s been cursed due to a series if unfortunate events that I won’t spoil for you.

The couple whose spotlight shines on is Maya and Conor.

Maya is twenty three, a prodigy physicist and is finishing her studies. She has had a huge crush for three years on Conor, Eli’s best friend who is thirty eight. Yet Conor is determined to keep her at arm’s length because of their age gap.

Will they end up together or not?

The tropes mentioned above are some favorite of mine except when the love interest repeats ad nauseam that he is too old, that he would be not good enough for her, that she doesn’t know what she wants yada yada yada.

It didn’t help either that it took a very long time to get to know Conor a smidge below surface level.

What began as great turned sour pretty quickly for me.

Luckily, the book was saved by the side characters, as in funny friends, adorable toddler and clumsy dog.

To sum it up: not my best experience with Ali but I will read her next book to know if it’s a fluke or if I got tired of the same recipe.

Don’t let my review discourage you from reading it though, go look for other reviews to decide if it’s something you would like to read or not because so far, Ali’s stories have always worked pretty well for me and she deserves the love.

Thanks for reading.

Sophie