Two Can Play (Ali Hazelwood)
- sarfirc
- Apr 19
- 2 min read
Updated: May 16
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Viola Bowen has the chance of a lifetime: to design a video game based on her all-time favorite book series. The only problem? Her co-lead is Jesse F-ing Andrews, a.k.a her arch-nemesis. 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
My main form of consuming books is reading physical books or reading on my Kindle, but I do listen to audiobooks from time to time, and when I do, it's usually biographies and memoirs. This was my first romance audiobook, and I really enjoyed it. I like the narrator Kelsey Navarro Foster; I think she added a lot of emotion to the story that you might not get if you just read the book. With this being a novella, I thought it was a smart idea by the author to make the main characters go to a team-building retreat for a couple of days so that you knew there was an end date to tie everything up easily. This book had a couple of different tropes throughout; forced proximity, workplace romance and miscommunication, just to name a few. One of my least favourite tropes for romance novels is the miscommunication trope. It irritates me reading books where there is just one thing standing in between the two main characters that could be fixed with just one conversation. That being said, I think the author did a good job with this trope. She did it in a way where the main character, Viola, had set boundaries that Jesse followed. Viola just hadn’t realised that she set those boundaries on him. Yes, it took 5 years to realise the miscommunication, but when they understood the misunderstanding, all it took was one adult conversation to fix it. And instead of feeling like this was just going to happen again in the future, like you do with a lot of romance novels with this trope, you're left with feeling like they are going to be stronger for going through because you leave knowing that Jesse understands and respects boundaries that Viola sets. With this being a nice quick listen, I will definitely listen to it again and again.
STATS
Date Started - 04/03/25
Date Finished - 04/03/25
Genre: Romance
Really interesting to read a review about an audio book. I have tried a book via audio but maybe after this review I will give it a go. Great review.
I’m glad there was a nice resolution to the story! I definitely understand why you might’ve been hesitant to read it with the miscommunication being such a large plot point!