Overall: 🐢🐢🐢
Storyline:
Writing Style:
Character Development:
Enjoyment:
“You can fall in love: someone will catch you.”
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
The Story:
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn’t believe in lasting romantic relationships–but her best friend does, and that’s what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor–and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford’s reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive’s career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding… six-pack abs.
Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
Key Elements:
Romance, Fake Dating, Academic, Friends, Ph.D, Scientists, Contemporary Romance, Chick Lit, HEA
Why This Rating?
This was a sweet romance story, but after reading this I can definitely say that the fake romance theme is not for me. Or perhaps, they could be if the main character was a bit more confident and wasn’t one to second guess everything they do. Besides, there is a point where it seems like it would be easier to be actually dating. But I get that isn’t what this trope is about.
Olive was one of those characters you spend a majority of the book yelling at and saying “Just Do It!”, “Say it already!”, or “stop freaking lying to yourself and others”. I’d give her maybe 2 moments where she believed in herself enough to do something that benefitted her own well-being. That, over everything that happened throughout the story, is what made it the hardest to read through. Give the main character some kind of a backbone, please?. And Adam is just precious! Coming from someone who also married a man who is very tall (I’m 5’5″ and he is 6’2″), Olive’s exaggerated moments of looking up and up and up at him just makes me laugh. He might come across as being a total jerk, but after getting to know him you can tell it all comes from the want of his students and others to do better than what they have. Also, it was so freaking obvious that Adam was wanting this to be real SO BAD. I really really liked him as a character and loved the fact that we got a little glimpse into his side as a bonus chapter in the version I read. I wanted to hear what was going on in that head for the whole book!
The science/schooling theme for the story was fun! I felt like I was back in college listening to the people around me be and show so much passion for a subject that is clearly a love in their lives. I also might not be looking in the right places, but I can’t say I’ve seen to many stories that take place in the doctorate level of schooling and STEM program schooling on top of that. I think I remember reading somewhere that this author holds Ph.D in Neuroscience, so clearly this type of theme is close to her heart. It shows with the passion and with the conversations in the novel.
I’d recommend this for most of the romance genre lovers, but you have to really really enjoy a drawn out fake dating story. And if you are wanting to give this one a shot, you’ll be running into a fair amount of cliche, eye rolling moments that might make you a tad angry. But there are a lot of cute moments between the fake dating couple that help sooth some of the heat building. Plus, the final 1/4 of the book is just worth reaching!
Time to get lost in the next story!
