Maya Killgore has been in love with her brothers best friend for three years and she just can’t get over her feelings. They haven’t talked in almost a year but her brother’s destination wedding is going to force them to be together for one week straight. Maya knows she can handle it, but being with Conor Harkness is going bubble all of those feelings to the surface and she’ll have to face being treated like a child by the man she loves. Conor has a real problem with their age difference. Maya is twenty-three and Conor is thirty-eight. She decides a summer fling might be just what she needs even if it’s a problematic one.

I really do love all of Ali Hazelwood’s female protagonists. Maya may be only twenty-three but she is a brilliant scientist. Her outlook on life through that microscope lense does make her a bit more mature than your average young woman starting a career, but there are moments when the reader is reminded of her inexperience. Most of those are seen through flashbacks to three years ago when she and Conor really got to know each other. I think they are supposed to represent not only their history, but also a contrast to how young she was then to the more mature Maya three years later. It works a bit, she does know what she wants, but without a little life experience she does seem a little young. Conor on the other hand, at thirty-eight does have his own business, but is a bit emotionally stunted from things he went through in his youth. He’s older, but feels a little younger. That narrows down their age difference to around 12 years. Does that really matter? Each reader is going to have their own opinion on that scenario. Despite Conor’s bringing it up all the time, I wouldn’t really have noticed the age difference.

In this novel, the author returns to a slow burn format. This is where our two romantic leads percolate through the whole book, building tension until the reader wants to give them a good shove in order to get the romance started. With the main conflict being their age difference, I really liked that they didn’t immediately get physical. I think that would have felt a bit icky, but because the tension built by the time they declared their feelings and got physical, their age difference felt natural and the reader was able to enjoy the story.

Ali Hazelwood is exploring a lot of themes in her books lately. The theme of an age difference in Problematic Summer Romance was interesting and surprisingly hot. Conor had that perfect amount of surly Alpha that the author does so well and Maya had just enough brilliance to match his experience. This novel is going to appeal to a lot of her readers. I know I enjoyed it.

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