Hello and happy Saturday. Yes, you read that right: I DNFed Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood. To be honest, I’m actually questioning whether I should remove her other books from my Wishlist because this wasn’t it at all.

Let me give you some context, first. This was the book I got as part of my Audible free trial, and I can say it was a complete waste. The whole Audible system is weird and I think you’re ultimately spending more money in most cases than what you’d supposedly save with your subscription. Regardless, I got this Ali Hazelwood book that, like all novels by this author was being super hyped. And I just couldn’t. It’s weird because audiobooks usually make the reading experience much better, but in this case, that wasn’t even helpful.

I can’t even talk about the author’s writing style because that took a backseat for me. You can’t imagine how absolutely uncomfortable I felt by the “age gap romance” and the implication that the main characters could’ve had feelings for each other when one of them was a minor. Yes, you can argue that nobody acted on said feelings then, but they were there altogether. Yes, you can argue that the main character is 23 years old and that a fifteen year age gap is actually common.

I hated it, and I’ve been with people who are thirteen years older than me. Making the main character 23 years old was a choice, a choice that the author made in her previous book because from what I understand this is the second installment in a stand-alone series. She could’ve made her, what? Two years older? Four years older? And yes, she could’ve kept the age gap, but she could’ve at least made the female main character’s prefrontal cortex be fully formed. Yeah, we’ll see what’ll happen with my Ali Hazelwood reading experience.