The Love Hypothesis

The Love Hypothesis had been on my radar for some time after seeing it on Christina Lauren’s Instagram. Thanks to the TikTok craze over this book, it became a lot easier to find a copy locally! This book is a great fake romance story but its crowning glory is that it’s set firmly in the science world. The main character, Olive, is a PhD student studying biomarkers for pancreatic cancer. Her fake relationship partner, Adam, is a successful biology professor with a lot of grants. The story is mainly set in the labs and on campus at university with a conference trip thrown in. It’s a familiar setting, but not to the romance world. But it works so well!

Olive, like most PhD students, is poor, tired and hungry. The bright parts of her show more life are her research (when it’s going well) and her friends. Olive’s best friend Anh has a crush on Jeremy, who Olive briefly, mistakenly dated. Friend code means Anh won’t go near him, but Olive wants her friend to have her chance at love. So she kisses the nearest male in the lab late one night, who happens to be Adam Carlsen. Friend to no PhD student and destroyer of dreams. Olive asks Adam to help her out and proposes a fake relationship that will benefit them both – Olive to her friends and Adam to the university. This will be the proof Anh needs that Olive is over Jeremy. But having a fake relationship brings multiple dramas for Olive and her colleagues, friends and research. To top it off, she starts to develop a crush on Adam…

The setting of the book is so familiar – postgrad uni, labs, research and all the dramas that go with research that feel huge when you’re in the middle of them. I loved that science was at the front, centre and back of this book. There’s even some statistics mentioned alongside cancer biomarkers. (If you’re not into these topics, you’ll still love the book. But the little science extras are the icing on the cake to those who known). It did take me a little while to get into the groove of Olive’s student life (thesis flashbacks I suspect) but once I was there, I loved the setting, the characters and the fake relationship. Hazelwood has a knack for great dialogue and putting her characters in awkward situations. Think having to put sunscreen on your fake lover. Getting ripped apart by a creep for something that’s entirely incorrect. Falling in love with someone who doesn’t understand pumpkin spice.

Finally, there’s romance fiction options in STEM. Thank you, Ali Hazelwood.

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Second read through and I still love it. I love how silly but memorable their meetings are and how they slowly build up to something real and precious. The puns kept me laughing when I wasn't crying or melting. The side characters are amazing too. I love reading about women succeeding in male fields and how they deal with the insecure and sexist assholes. Remember, "Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man" lol.

Ph.D. candidate Olive Smith is trying to set up her best friend Ahn with a guy she used to date, which entails convincing said friend that she's over said guy. So, Olive hastily stages a kiss where Ahn is likely to see her. What she doesn't realize until too late is that she's kissing Dr. Adam Carlsen -- the hot, young department superstar, known to be an arrogant jerk. To Olive's surprise, Adam is willing to go along with a fake dating scheme, for his own reasons. Of course, we all know (even Olive knows) how the fake relationship trope is likely to turn out...

It's easy to say that this is the best book I've read so far this year (seeing as it's the first book I've read in 2023), but I imagine it will be turning up on my list of show more year-end favorites for all that. The characters are so delightful, and the situations they get into so hilarious. I love how Olive keeps referencing the trope, while Adam, who has never watched a rom-com in his life, is baffled by her references. There's a steamy chapter or two, but it's much more focused on characters and plot development outside the bedroom. I will be looking for this author's other books right away, and highly recommending this to anyone who enjoys contemporary romance. show less

Olive Smith is a third-year PhD candidate at Stanford who, while trying to convince her best friend she's seeing someone, spontaneously kisses a random guy late at night in the biology lab and is mortified when she realizes that said guy is Dr. Adam Carlsen. As a known asshole, she can't imagine how poorly he'll react to the whole situation but is entirely surprised when he's totally fine with it and offers to be her fake boyfriend to help Olive. The situation will also help Adam as he's trying to convince Stanford he's not a flight-risk so that they'll unfreeze some of his grant funding. Appearing to be in a relationship will go a long way to making Adam's case with the faculty. However, fake dating isn't quite as simple as it seems, show more particularly when those around them keep expecting things from the "couple." At the same time, an approaching academic conference will have the potential to change everything for Olive and Adam, both personally and professionally.

This novel is so damn cute. Having finally read it, I'm not surprised that it was such a sensation when it debuted last year. Hazelwood is a neuroscientist herself and her descriptions of academia are highly accurate. In addition to good science details, Hazelwood is also just great at fluffy romance writing. She manages to joyfully include many of the best romance tropes into this novel (fake dating being the most obvious), while making them feel completely feasible. The banter between Olive and the taciturn Adam is wonderful and the slow burn of their romance is thoroughly rewarding. Highly recommended for fans of the genre. show less

I finally read it, STEM, romance, the whole package. I liked the characters, but I didn’t fall in love with them. I wanted more depth, more chemistry. Admittedly, some of my distance came from how close to home this felt. As someone with multiple degrees in the field, I had a “too real” tab going. The grad school insecurities struck a nerve: I questioned pursuing it, I went in on vague curiosities about the brain, genes, and the environment, with no real plan post-undergrad. A PhD in Biology felt like the next, uncertain step. Some details hit a little too hard: the bleakness of the academic inbox, with predatory journals and conference spam, ancient mentor emails, and the cruel reminder that a "four-year program" rarely takes show more four years. As I reminisced on how I spent most of my twenties, I appreciated just how authentic the portrayal of academia was. It’s exhausting, inspiring, and punishing all at once. It lost me on the genre’s usual reliance on miscommunication tropes. So many things could have been resolved with an honest adult conversation, and that bogged down my enjoyment. Also, Tom... I have my own conference memories that resurfaced less fondly while reading. It wasn’t quite the escape I hoped for, though it was cute. I’ll definitely be watching the movie, especially since I visited the Montreal set yesterday at a friend’s lab. This may have been less a review of the book and more a reflection on my history with academia, but that’s probably fitting. show less

When Olive, a third year PhD student, impulsively asks a man in the biology hallway if she can kiss him, she’s just hoping to convince her best friend that she’s on a date. Not start a department-wide rumour that she and Dr Adam Carlston are in a relationship. But once the rumour takes off, she and Adam decide they both benefit from allowing it to continue.

This ticked a lot of boxes for me. University setting! Fake dating! Single-POV! Characters explicitly addressing potential power imbalance in their relationship! But more than that, I enjoyed Olive’s interactions with Adam for the way they quickly develop in-jokes, the way both of them ask the other if they're okay with something, and the way Olive discovers she's comfortable show more telling Adam about her mistakes and anxieties. I enjoyed this so much I immediately reread it.

“Ground rules?”
“Yes. You know. What we are allowed and not allowed to do. What we can expect from this arrangement. I think that’s pretty standard protocol, before embarking on a fake-dating relationship.”
He tilted his head. “Standard protocol?”
“Yup.”
“How many times have you done this?”
“Zero. But I am familiar with the trope.” show less

This was a reread for me and i think i loved it more this time around. I really enjoyed how Ali portrayed Olive's character as a woman in academia. In a world ran by men this just gives hope to all those women to not give up. Olive's research also warmed my heart, especially because she was doing it for her mom. Adam oh Adam, since page one i knew Olive left an impression on him he could not move on from and the way he just went along with everything she threw at him 🥵 Loved!! By far one of my favorite grumpy MMC. ❤️