All Ali Hazelwood Books in Order to Keep Your TBR Spicy

Themes: STEM, academia; Tropes: fake dating, grumpy/sunshine, slow burn

Olive Smith spends more time with her lab bench than with other humans, and the book treats that as both tragedy and punchline. She’s stubborn, funny in the way only stressed-out grad students can be, and perpetually caught between ambition and chaos. What follows is pure Hazelwood: razor-sharp sarcasm clashing with unnerving silences, chemistry masquerading as coincidence, a campus world where romance and research share the same fluorescent lighting. It’s nerdy, swoony, and calibrated for maximum tension.

Spice: 2/5
Slow burn: 4/5

Themes: STEM, neuroscience; Tropes: enemies/rivals to lovers, workplace romance, slow burn

Bee Königswasser looks like chaos incarnate until you notice how ruthlessly her brain hums beneath it all. She barrels through academia with hair dyed loud enough to be a warning sign and an interior monologue that could fuel its own conference. Drop her into a high-stakes NASA project and everything crackles: professional pressure, sarcastic rejoinders, the uneasy gravity of two people orbiting each other and pretending not to notice. It’s nerd romance at escape velocity.

Spice: 2/5
Slow burn: 3/5

Themes: STEM; Tropes: forced proximity

Not a single story, but three compact explosions of STEM romance bound together under one cover. Loathe to Love You is Hazelwood in short form: novellas that are quick to read, messy in all the best ways, but each carrying that same mix of science jargon and blush-inducing chaos.

Under One Roof
Mara, an environmental engineer with zero chill, finds herself in a living arrangement that can only be described as an experiment gone rogue. She’s brilliant, prickly, and a little too good at arguing her way into trouble. It’s domestic chaos meets nerd-flavored banter, calibrated for maximum eye-rolling chemistry.
Spice: 1/5; Slow burn: 3/5

Stuck With You
Sadie could troubleshoot both a reactor and her own heartbreak. She’s sarcastic, overthinking everything, and when she gets trapped in close quarters that feel like the punchline to a bad joke, the tension builds like static electricity in a server room. It’s claustrophobic, funny, and sparks fly faster than circuitry.
Spice: 2/5; Slow burn: 2/5

Below Zero
Hannah, a NASA scientist who prefers data over people, winds up in a landscape as cold and unforgiving as her first impressions. She’s analytical to the bone, but cracks start showing once survival instincts and unexpected warmth collide. Think icy terrain, frostbitten sarcasm, and a thaw you can feel page by page.
Spice: 2/5; Slow burn: 3/5

Themes: STEM, physics academia; Tropes: enemies/rivals to lovers, slow burn

Elsie Hannaway is a physicist who also moonlights as a people-pleaser. She toggles between teaching jobs and side hustles with the precision of a metronome, all while trying to pass as unbothered. On the page she’s sharp, overextended, and perpetually calculating. Hazelwood leans hard into academia here: rivalries dressed as lectures, irony so dry it could desiccate a whiteboard, and the slow-burn patience of watching ice finally crack.

Spice: 2/5
Slow burn: 4/5

Themes: chess; Tropes: rivals to lovers, prodigy vs underdog, slow burn

Mallory Greenleaf would rather ghost the entire world than play one more match of competitive chess, and yet here she is: a reluctant prodigy stuck across the board from someone equally impossible. She’s sardonic, weary beyond her years, and yet every move she makes is threaded with that reckless, youthful energy Hazelwood doesn’t usually let herself indulge. This isn’t the lab-coated STEM chaos of her adult novels but a sharp detour into YA: rivalry as foreplay, strategy as subtext, and the unmistakable sting of being nineteen and out of excuses.

Spice: 0.5/5
Slow burn: 3/5

Themes: vampire & werewolf; Tropes: marriage of convenience, enemies to lovers, slow burn

Misery Lark — even her name sounds like a warning. She’s a vampire with enough bite in her personality to match her fangs, suddenly pulled into a political arrangement that feels less like matrimony and more like a dare. Hazelwood swaps out labs for bloodlines here, but keeps her trademarks intact: sharp irony, heroines who’d rather combust than compromise, and a slow drip of attraction that builds like a dangerous experiment. Paranormal, yes, but still Hazelwood through and through.

Spice: 2/5
Slow burn: 4/5

Themes: contemporary; Tropes: enemies to lovers, opposites attract, forbidden love

Rue Siebert walks onto the page already armored, all sharp edges and bad timing, like someone who knows exactly how to ruin her own night and does it anyway. The book hums with Hazelwood’s familiar tension but swapped into darker tones — less neon lab, more dimly lit bar where every glance feels like a dare. It’s brittle, magnetic, and a little dangerous, the kind of romance that keeps circling back to the question: what if wanting someone is the worst possible idea and still impossible to stop?

Spice: 3/5
Slow burn: 3/5

Themes: contemporary; Tropes: second chance, small town

Grace Porter is done pretending she isn’t still furious: at the snowstorm, at the past, at the man fate just locked her in with. She’s practical to the bone, sharp-tongued when cornered, and not built for small talk (or small towns). Hazelwood sets her against a backdrop of frozen roads and colder silences, where every shared glance feels like reopening an old wound. The result is winter romance that proves proximity and history are a dangerous cocktail, especially when served with frostbite and unresolved feelings.

Spice: 2/5
Slow burn: 3/5

Themes: sports romance with hints of STEM; Tropes: opposite attracts

Scarlett Vandermeer used to slice into the pool like she owned it. Now every dive is a question mark — about her body, her head, her future. Hazelwood sets her against the backdrop of elite swimming, where chlorine stings and ambition burns hotter than the sunlamps. Scarlett is prickly, vulnerable, and entirely magnetic: one minute making you want to scream into a towel, the next making you ache with her need to prove herself. The book is physical in every sense — sweat, speed, the terrifying intimacy of someone watching you crack open. It’s romance with a stopwatch running.

Spice: 3/5
Slow burn: 4/5

Themes: contemporary; Tropes: opposite attracts

June Chu is supposed to be brilliant, and she is, but brilliance doesn’t stop your life from unraveling at the seams. She’s fresh off an academic implosion, back in her parents’ house with the walls closing in, when the story throws her into a summer that feels equal parts second chance and social experiment. Hazelwood tilts her usual STEM-nerd energy into something warmer, sweatier, more combustible: poolside heat, family chaos, and the kind of attraction that simply cannot wait its turn. This one hums with resentment and possibility, all wrapped in Hazelwood’s signature sarcasm.

Spice: 2/5
Slow burn: 4/5

Themes: paranormal, vampiresTropes: forbidden romance, enemies to lovers

Claire would like to mind her own business, except her business now involves killing things with fangs. She’s competent, tired, and perpetually two steps from disaster, which makes her the perfect Hazelwood heroine to drop into a paranormal mess. This novella is lean and fast, but it still drips with the author’s favorite flavors: snark in the face of danger, desire sharpening every argument, and tension coiled tight enough to sting. Vampires, hunters, forbidden attraction — all distilled into a shot-glass of chaos.

Spice: 2/5
Slow burn: 3/5

Themes: paranormal romance, werewolves; Tropes: fated mates, forbidden love

Fox D’Lyte doesn’t exactly blend in, not with wolves prowling at the edges of her world and a political order built on grudges older than memory. She’s sharp, restless, and forever caught between instincts: human, were, survival, desire. Hazelwood leans fully into the paranormal here, crafting a landscape where pack politics and personal loyalties clash until sparks feel like claws. The book’s pulse is feral and intimate all at once, with enemies circling, alliances tested, attraction baring its teeth. It’s messy and primal.

Spice: 3/5
Slow burn: 4/5

Themes: dystopian, post-apocalyptic romance; Tropes: survival 

Published through Kickstarter and not widely available, FIRST is Hazelwood’s experiment in “what if the world actually ended but romance didn’t get the memo?” The collection gathers dystopian tales where survival and intimacy rub shoulders, proof that even in post-apocalyptic rubble people still make questionable choices about who to kiss. It’s shorter, darker, and more fragmented than her mainstream work, but the Hazelwood fingerprints are obvious: women who keep pushing, irony laced through despair, and sparks lighting up the ruins.

Spice: 1/5
Slow burn: 2/5