Title: Love, Theoretically
Author: Ali Hazelwood
Genre: Contemporary romance
Publisher: Books on Tape
Publication Date: June 2023 (audio release)
Format: Audiobook
Length: 13 hours

Read if you like: fake dating, women in STEM, he falls first, academic rivals to lovers, miscommunication, only one bed

Rating: 

Generally speaking, I typically say that while I’m not super into romance novels, I make an exception for Ali Hazelwood. I usually love her academic settings, the smart female lead characters, and the realistic depictions of sexism and the gruelling nature of academia. With Love, Theoretically though, I fear I may be reaching my limit for some of the other writing elements she consistently deploys. 

There were many aspects of Love, Theoretically that just felt too close to Hazelwood’s other novels for me to feel like this story was wholly unique. The fake dating harkened back to Love on the Brain, the miscommunications drove me nuts and reminded me of all her other stories, and I found myself getting more and more frustrated in this novel with the FMC’s lack of confidence. She was so smart and capable, but it felt like it took her an exceptionally long time to grow into it, and I found myself getting impatient.

I’ve enjoyed Hazelwood’s other novels, and if you have to, there’s no reason that Love, Theoretically wouldn’t also be a super solid read. It was still entertaining, and I did enjoy it, it’s just that for me, it had a few too many of the tropes and plot aspects that get under my skin in a romance novel for me to feel like this one was a real hit. All in all a consistent Hazelwood novel, I just would have liked to see something different. 

The Book Synopsis: Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.

Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, right between Elsie and her dream job.

Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?

The Review

Let me start this review by saying that I did find this book enjoyable. I always love Hazelwood’s academic settings, and this book was no different, instead choosing to focus on the brutal life of an adjunct faculty member trying to land a permanent enough spot to be able to get her feet underneath her, in terms of her research/career and her finances. I loved the representation of a chronic illness (diabetes) and that Hazelwood explored the very real impacts that such a condition can have on the rest of your life, and as always, I loved that Elsie was smart, capable, and a scientific powerhouse. These were all the aspects that kept me hooked enough to finish the book.

I was a little thrown by the use of fake dating, even though the application was different from Love on the Brain through the presence of the agency. It still just felt weirdly similar given how close in release these two books were. 

I also got really, really tired of all of the miscommunications. I’ve lamented about miscommunications in romance novels many times, and I know that they’re a staple of the genre, but I simply will never not find them frustrating. Just TALK to each other! 

Overall, I always appreciate the STEM representation that Hazelwood weaves through her novels, but I would love to see her create a FMC that isn’t riddled with insecurity. There’s often a quirky best friend in her books that seems to possess all the self-assurance that I’m looking for in a female lead and I keep finding myself wishing one of her books wholly focused on these women instead of the leads. That’s just a personal preference thing though and is no fault of the author.

If Hazelwood’s previous novels were all 5 stars for you, I can’t imagine that you’ll feel terribly different about Love, Theoretically. I think for me, I had just hoped to see some different tropes and communication styles with the characters, but it was still an entertaining book, and as always, a great audio performance.