Book Review: The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

Ali Hazelwood is quickly becoming one of those authors that I can just pick up and read and immediately get sucked in. I wouldn’t say the books are groundbreaking, but they are just enjoyable RomComs. They are books you can easily imagine being a hit RomCom movie starring the latest and greatest actors, and have all the standard RomCom tropes.

The Love Hypothesis is about Olive, a grad student at Stanford, who asks a random man in the hallway of her lab to kiss her in hopes of convincing her best friend, Ahn, that she is over her ex, Jeremy. For context, Ahn and Jeremy like each other, but Ahn doesn’t want to betray Olive by dating her ex, but Olive was never super into Jeremy enough to truly care if they dated.

Olive then realizes she is kissing none other than Dr Adam Carlsen, one of the big-name scientists/professors at Stanford, who is a notorious asshole. She then has to explain to him WHY she asked a random man in the hallway to kiss her, and she eventually escapes the embarrassing encounter. Olive ends up running into him a few days later, and while Olive is still mortified, Adam teases her about the whole thing. They ultimately agree to fake-date because it helps Olive, but also helps Adam because his department heads believe he’s about to be poached by another university, and having a local girlfriend would help prove that he’s “putting down roots”.

There are a lot of miscommunication tropes, falling for the fake boyfriend tropes, and I’m sure a few more classic RomCom tropes that I missed thrown in. It’s one of those books that you get exactly what you expected. Like your favorite packaged dessert, it never disappoints.

If you are in the mood for a feel-good contemporary romance with a dash of Academia thrown in, you should check it out. One thing I do appreciate, however, is that Adam has never been Olive’s superior or mentor. Yes, he’s a professor, but he has never been HER professor. I always find the whole professor/student storylines a bit gross.

You can find it here: https://amzn.to/3R2p2ld

I’m giving it 4.5 stars just because, while it’s predictable, it was thoroughly enjoyable.