Review: Two Can Play, by Ali Hazelwood
by
Stuart Holland
I went in expecting this one to be spicy and I got what a bargained for, most of the last third of the book is a sex scene (the book is about 4.5 hours long). The conceit of how this could be enemies to lovers is a bit of a stretch. I was worried about half way through though, how could this turn around so that Viola and Jesse get together? (Since they did seem to be the enemies.) The resolution of that threaded a fine needle, it wasn’t disappointing but it also wasn’t the best version of a twist that I would’ve liked to see in its place. It did the job of setting up the romance well but not excellently: Jesse isn’t a terrible person (though he clearly has terrible timing) but it only explained some of what happened before (I don’t think it quite nailed all of it).
Viola and Jesse are both game developers and they talk like character-ized versions of that, in a good way. They’re like more exaggerated versions of conversations I’d have with colleagues, rather than anything that’s actually out of place. And Fallout 76 does not come out well in this book, damn. Viola’s family also sounds infuriating (as they are clearly intended to).
And maybe it’s an intentional artifact of that family, but for the first half of the book I was struck by how negative a lot of the conversations and trains of thought were. Not the ones that were clearly intended to be where conflict occurred, but even the everyday that did get covered had an undercurrent of cynicism to it. But maybe that was also an intentional counterweight to the rosey sweetness of everything in the latter parts.
The narration from Kelsey Navarro Foster was a great performance - she has a great voice and really sells the emotion of any line. It’s also always at least a little uncertain whether she’s being sarcastic.
Overall, easy reading. If you want some romance and some sex scenes, this will definitely fit the bill.
