Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Purchase

My Rating: 5/5 Stars

Primary Genre: STEM Romance/Contemporary Romance

Blurb: Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Readers' Favorite Romance (2023)

The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs. Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, right between Elsie and her dream job. Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?

My Thoughts:

What can I say, my last book may have gotten my hooked on Ali Hazelwood. This book is a whole mess of entanglements and I adore it. Elsie is an adjunct professor and a theoretical physicist. She is also a chronic people pleaser who tends to morph herself into whatever she thinks that whoever she’s talking to wants her to be. She’s desperately searching for a new job with health insurance due to her type 1 diabetes and also not wanting to live in a gross apartment. Jack is the brother of the guy she fake dates for money through an app called Faux and an experimental physicist. Jack is brutally honest and despises lies/being fake.  I love that there’s still fake dating but it’s not between the two main characters, that she ends up in a huge mess with her fake date’s brother. I love the grandmother Millicent most of all, I think. I’m guessing that I’ll be just like her when I’m old 😆 This book has lots of nerdy science in it. Lots of talk about physics and jokes about physics. Kind of like The Big Bang Theory but with way more romance. A great book to read before you watch the movie Oppenheimer. This is 100% an enemies to lovers trope and it’s a great one. It’s also funny, think of it as a romcom. The emails from Elsie’s students are hilarious and I love that they’re included throughout the book. There’s also a little crossover with Olive and Adam from The Love Hypothesis! Absolutely love that. There's so much juicy drama in this book; a revenge plot, a third act breakup and Elsie's prolonged search for health insurance. This book should be a movie, because it's so hard to explain it to someone. There's tons of layers. HIGHLY recommend this book and (in my experience so far) Ali Hazelwood's books in general. 

This post contains links to an affiliate website, and I receive a commission for any purchase made by you on the affiliate website by using the links.

Previous

Next