If you haven’t heard of or read The Love Hypothesis at this point, how big is the rock you live under? Because that book is daggum everywhere and I’m here for it it. It’s a good one. While I was pretty meh about Ali Hazelwood‘s STEMinist Novellas over the last few months, I still held out hope for her second full-length novel, Love on the Brain, and that turned out to be worth it.

Love on the Brain follows a neuroscientist named Bee. She’s had a pretty wild life but her career is struggling, not because she’s bad at it but because she’s a woman in science. I do not envy her. Bee gets a spot co-leading a project with NASA… and their pick happens to be the guy who was not so nice to her all through grad school.

Bee temporarily moves to Houston to work on the project, only to find her office is empty and there’s no equipment. Things get worse for Bee when she finds out Levi canceled the order of said equipment right before she got there. But, calling him out leads her to learning that there’s a whole lot of politics at play in this mess, and Levi might not actually be as bad as she remembers.

Love on The Brain is all kinds of tropey, with forced proximity, workplace romance, and a version of second chance love, just to name a few. There are some similarities to Hazelwood’s first book, but overall, I didn’t care. I was mildly obsessed with this book and stayed up way too late before a big day at work in hopes of finishing it… which only made the big day more annoying since I couldn’t get to the end sooner. It’s predictable but delightful and I couldn’t stop plowing through the nerdy love. I do question if two people who are so dang similar would work out, but whatever. They are happy in the moment and it’s fun.

If you’re nerdy and you know it, grab this book.

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