Time for another round of Yvonne’s Shorties! This time a romance novella that surprisingly ended up being a total miss for me and a sci-fi/horror classic that wasn’t as good as I hoped either…

Title: Under One Roof
(The STEMinist Novellas #1)
Author: Ali Hazelwood
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
First published: February 8th 2022
Publisher: Berkley
Finished reading: June 26th 2022
Pages: 112

“See, that’s the thing I hate the most about adulting: at some point, one has to start doing it.”


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I had such a great time with The Love Hypothesis when I finally read it earlier this year, and I’ve been looking forward to read more of her work ever since. There is just something about the way she writes her romance and the focus on women in science that made me an instant fan, and I fully expected to enjoy my time with Under One Roof as well. I don’t usually read a lot of novellas, because I tend to prefer a more developed plot and characters, but this first novella of a series had a very promising premise. I mean, two strangers having to share a house, an enemy-to-lover trope AND a science angle? What’s not to love?! Sadly, this story ended up being a total miss for me. From the flat and cliche characters, the lack of focus on the science and that absolutely awkward, awful and cringeworthy steamy scene that almost made me vomit; this was just not what I signed up for. Both Mara and Liam lacked fleshing out and basically felt like cardboard cutouts. The constant repetition of just how huge and manly Liam is made me cringe; and especially when it’s being compared over and over again to just how tiny Mara is. Yuck. The hate part of the enemy-to-lover trope felt so childish, and I never felt the chemistry between the two. The switch to the lover part was also way too abrupt, and then I’m not even talking about the absolute disaster zone that is the smut (to make things worse it seems like the scene goes on for AGES; someone please pour bleach in my eyes). I was also hugely disappointed by the lack of focus on the science, which was part of the reason this novella appealed to me in the first place. Oh yes, Under One Roof and me definitely didn’t get along, and after reading comments about the second novella with similar cliched characters and cringeworthy smut (yes, I’ve learned a new word), I’ve made the decision to not continue this series. I do hope her next full novel will be up to the standards of The Love Hypothesis again; otherwise I might have to give this author a full pass in the future.

Title: The Island Of Doctor Moreau
Author: H.G. Wells
Genre: Classics, Science Fiction, Horror
First published: 1896
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Finished reading: June 26th 2022
Pages: 139

“An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.”


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I’ve been meaning to read The Island Of Doctor Moreau for years now… Of course I had some idea of what the story was about, but somehow I never actually read the story itself until now. I don’t usually read a lot of sci-fi horror, but there was something about this classic that had me intrigued. And since I needed more titles for my Reading Through The Centuries challenge, I decided to finally give in and read it. And boy, I definitely didn’t expect this story to be quite so dark and gruesome! There is a heavy focus on severe animal cruelty and this made the story quite a tough nut to swallow… I usually don’t mind gruesome or gory, but somehow in this case it was too much for me. The premise itself is still intriguing, with the narrator being saved by one of the island’s inhabitants after surviving a shipwreck and then slowly discovering the horrors that the island hide. There was just something about the execution that didn’t convince me completely though, and I can’t say that I actually enjoyed my time with The Island Of Doctor Moreau. I do still appreciate it simply for how controversial and ahead of his time this story must have been at the time of its publication in 1896.

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