Review: The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

I heard a lot of hype about The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, and I have to say that for me, at least, it totally lives up to the hype! This is one of my favorite books that I have read this year! I came into the book knowing that it was inspired by Reylo, and not totally sure how that would play out. (Disclosure: I’m also a Reylo stan). So with that in mind, and considering the fact that my career is also STEM-related, I was ready to dive in.

The book centers around Olive, who is a sweet and somewhat naive Ph.D candidate at Stanford. Her best friend, Ahn, is interested in Olive’s ex, and to make sure that Ahn believes that she doesn’t have any lingering feelings for the ex, Olive pretends to be in a relationship with Adam Carlson, a professor known for his perfectionism and blunt manner. The story follows the two as they fake-date their way to real romance.

Overall, the book was well-done. The scenes between Olive and Adam were really cute and of course the whole time, I was dying for them to JUST KISS ALREADY. The tension between them was really well built, and the silly forced proximity scenes between them were exactly the kind of light-hearted romance ridiculousness that I crave from rom-coms. Is it believable? Absolutely not. But is it fun? Hell yes!

My criticisms here are fairly mild. I thought that Olive could be a little too naive and childish sometimes. She seemed to be on the verge of crying almost constantly and I am not super into the whole sweet, pure, innocent girl trope unless it is in fantasy. A lot of the main issues could have just been solved rather quickly with an adult conversation.

But all things considered, this book delivered exactly what it promised! It’s getting a full ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars from me!