Mild spoilers ahead.

I agreed to buddy read Love on the Brain and I made it through more of this one than TLH, in large part because the power dynamic was better balanced (I could not with the Professor/Student relationship and the ridiculous situations the characters were constantly in, nor the sexual harassment plotline).

LOVE ON THE BRAINS is essentially the exact same pairing as TLH otherwise; a HUGELY tall, taciturn grump and a smol, sweet yet anxious and over thinking and do-gooding sunshine who is mostly oblivious until the tall tells her otherwise.

The prose is so choppy and absolutely does not work for me; there's so many repetitive descriptions of his eyes, his HUGE BODY and muscles and riding his thigh. There's one description of his eyes that reads like the terrible poem written for Bev in the book IT by stephen king. His d*ck is TOO BIG too handle. And yes, these are classic romance novel kinks, but in this story with it being otherwise an attempt to portray a hyper realistic contemporary setting, it just did not work for me. I don't want to read jokes about expressing a cat's anal glands okay?

Honestly, as a person who with anxiety, Bee's thoughts and the prose made me feel anxious while reading, which is a bummer.

I skimmed a lot, then there was a part involving a gun and violence which also did not work for me. Sure there's sex scenes but I was just missing emotion and feeling from the one-sided POV.

Essentially, this author's writing doesn't work for me. I'm so glad it works for clearly so many of you. I wish her the best, but I won't be trying any more.

Content notes: two white main characters, two cats who are safe and live, gun with threat of gun violence, gas lighting by a secondary character, gender essentialist jokes about men in STEM being cockitists and other penis jokes assigning penises to men only.

I received a advance review copy from the publisher; thank you