Ali Hazelwood: Love Hypothesis (2021, Penguin Publishing Group)
English language
Published July 27, 2021 by Penguin Publishing Group.
Sexy, sassy and wonderfully feel-good, Hazelwood's science-based rom-com finds a PhD student embarking on a fake relationship with a hot young professor. When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated theories on love into chaos
The book is nothing deep and the writing isn't anything special – but it's fun. Like a popcorn movie.
Content warning General spoilers
I really sped through this one (read it in two days), but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. It's a light read and a little too up my alley.
That aside, I will say first and foremost: this reads like fanfiction. I mean this in a pretty positive way, since I enjoy the tropes going on here. I also enjoy the perspective that the author has on academia, being an academic herself. Some jokes genuinely got a snicker out of me, and some bits about impostor syndrome and the ups and downs of a PhD program were a little bit too real.
I will say, how on the nose it was with fourth wall breaks and self-referential humor was a little annoying in some parts. The obliviousness of the main couple, while enjoyable most of the time, was also incredibly unbelievable. Even for fanfiction. I also felt like the ending really lacked gravitas because of how quickly Olive and Adam got back together. I would've liked to see more struggle there. I do also want to note that the characters are somewhat one-dimensional. This is definitely the largest drawback of the fact that it reads like fanfiction. (EDIT: this makes more sense now, see below) I feel like I barely understood Olive, and I understood even less of Adam. I would've liked more time spent with Olive and Adam overall, but honestly I'm not sure if this writing style or storyline would've been able to sustain much more plot without getting tedious.
Anyway, the tl;dr is that this book was perfectly servicable for my specific interests and I enjoyed it as a fellow academic.
EDIT: I was informed after writing this review that this was reylo fanfic. That connects a lot of dots. I'm not a fan of reylo, but it doesn't influence my opinion in any way in regards to this review.
