This one’s for the nerds.

Ali Hazelwood flew into our social media feeds a couple years ago with The Love Hypothesis [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM], followed by Love on the Brain [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM] and her short story collection, Loathe to Love You [Buy Bookshop Amazon]. Now, she’s back with another STEM-based romance, Love, Theoretically [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM] and yes, you can expect a lot of the same vibes.

Love, Hypothetically follows Elsie (or Elise if you’re her academic advisor whom she’s never corrected) as she tries to juggle being an adjunct professor at three universities in Boston and moonlighting as a fake girlfriend to help pay the rent. The struggle is real. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel as she’s in the running for a better paying gig at MIT with a much lighter teaching load and a lot more research time. Elsie would much rather be researching liquid crystals instead of sifting through excuse emails from students, so she’s giving it her best shot.

However, to get the job, Elsie has to go through the guy who basically ruined her profession. Jonathan Smith-Turner wrote a hoax article years before that directly impacted people in her life and made her area of study a laughing stock (hence the ‘theoretically’ in the title.) This dude has an experimental physicist picked out for the job, while Elsie is in theoretical. And things get even more complicated when he shows up and she realizes she’s been fake-dating the guy’s brother. Chaos ensues.

Now for my thoughts…. Is Love, Theoretically basically the same as Hazelwood’s prior books with different characters? Yes. I’d really love to see her take on different tropes and archetypes instead of enemies-to-lovers/ only one bed with a giant, muscle-y scientist and an average-looking petite girl. If you’re tired of that vibe from Hazelwood, than this is not for your.

However, I still enjoyed this and read it within 24 hours. There are plenty of nerdy references from Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc. that are quite fun, as well as science stuff that just goes over my head most of the time. Hazelwood’s writing style feels authentic to the nerd girl stream of consciousness vibe it’s portraying.

This book also has a lot to say about various practices in academia. Hazelwood notes that some of it is based on personal experience from herself and others she knows. Hopefully this story can help elevate the attention on the issues and we’ll see improvements for women in the field moving forward.

Bonus: We get Adam and Olive cameos! Universe = connected! Woo!

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