Book Title: Two Can Play
Author’s Name: Ali Hazelwood
Reading Type: Audiobook
Start Date: 12/19/2025
End Date:12/20/2025

Links to the Book: Amazon; Audible; Goodreads

The Book’s Summary

An enemies-to-lovers spicy novella set in the world of video gaming from the New York Times bestselling author of Problematic Summer Romance—now in print and ebook!

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, aka her archnemesis. 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.

Mouse’s Review and Thoughts

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

There are spoilers within this review.

This Review has spoilers in it.
I really like that Viola (the main Female Character) is a lead game designer. It is weird to be pulled into the game creation side of this book. Viola’s enemy is the head designer of another company, whose name is Jessie. They aren’t really enemies. In my mind, that makes it all the better. They finally come together and work through the misunderstanding from their first meeting. They spent years having issues because of a huge misunderstanding, and ah (Softly screams in the void). She didn’t even remember her own words that caused all this to happen. I’m so happy that they figured it out in the end. I kinda of wish that there was more to how they make it work after getting back from the trip. It’s easy to form something when you have “all the time in the world”. I would like to know how Viola’s mother reacts to meeting Jessie. Jessie is also in the game design industry. It’s known that Viola’s mother isn’t too fond of her working in the game design industry. There was also very little mentioned about Jessie’s family. He is an only child. His mother and father weren’t around much during his childhood. While this book is only a novella, I wish it were a full-fledged novel. There is so much potential with this storyline. With all of that in mind, I’m going to rate it 3.5 stars.
I look forward to reading more from Ali. She is a fantastic writer.