Publication: 13th June 2023 – Sphere
From the author of tiktok sensations and global bestsellers The Love Hypothesis and Love on the Brain
Rival physicists collide in a vortex of academic feuds and fake dating shenanigans in this delightfully STEMinist romcom.
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 arrogant older brother of her favourite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And he’s the same Jack Smith who rules over the physics department at MIT, standing 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?
Love, Theoretically is another fantastic STEM romance whose protagonist is Elsie, a theoretical physicist (which I am already familiar with thanks to my endless rewatching of the Big Bang Theory), who works as an adjunct professor at several Boston universities that don’t pay much and she shares a crappy apartment with her best friend Cece and her hedgehog. She’s turned to fake-dating to pay off her student loans and, beside a few idiots who tried to ask for more, so far, she can’t complain. Except when it comes to her current fake boyfriend, or better yet, his arrogant and handsome brother, Jack, who seems to see right through her. Things turn more complicated when Jack turns out to be an experimental physicist on the committee for a tenure position at MIT she’s interviewing for and also the same man who ruined the career of her mentor. Elsie is determined to get the job and fight against the man who is her enemy even though she finds him very attractive. How can she fall for the very same man she should despise?
Elsie is a brilliant character. Her weakness is – beside cheese – that she can’t never say no to people. She can’t say no to her mother when she wants her to play negotiator between her two brothers; she can’t say no to her mentor when he wants her to keep doing multiple jobs instead of trying to get the tenure position; she can’t say no to the many students who ask her for an extension with the most absurd excuses. She has the unique skill to read people and adapt to them so that she can win them over. However, Jack is the exception. She can’t understand him, can’t figure out what he is going to do next. Elsie is funny, smart, and determined, while Jack is probably my favorite of Ali Hazelwood’s men: behind that tough and grumpy exterior there is an adorable, honest, and reliable man.
Ali Hazelwood never disappoints: the enemies-to-lovers trope, the witty banter and the sexy chemistry between Elsie and Jack, the women in STEM theme who have to deal with sexism in the workplace, nerdy and fantastic characters, and the rivalry between experimental and theoretical physicists… witty, immersive, and romantic, I read Love, Theoretically in one day!
A huge thank you to Sphere and NetGalley for providing me with a proof of the novel.
Ali Hazelwood is the New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis and Love on the Brain, as well as a writer of peer-reviewed articles about brain science, in which no one makes out and the ever after is not always happy. Originally from Italy, she lived in Germany and Japan before moving to the US to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. She recently became a professor, which absolutely terrifies her. When Ali is not at work, she can be found running, eating cake pops, or watching sci-fi movies with her two feline overlords (and her slightly-less-feline husband).
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