Book Review: The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

Rating: 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

After seeing the hype for this book all over TikTok and Instagram for weeks, I was so eager to get my hands on a copy. It sounded like the perfect book to read for the summer, filled with the grumpy meets sunshine trope that is so much fun to read. However, there was just something about this book that I couldn’t get my head around. I found myself wanting to shake Hazelwood’s protagonist Olive from the very beginning. I’m not sure if it was the fact that this was a professor/teacher relationship or even the slightly cringeworthy sex scene towards the end of the book, but, even though I hate to say it, there was something about this book that just would not get me hooked. That being said, there are some things that I could praise about this book, the biggest one being the characters. Every single one of the characters that we encounter throughout are so well written; so lovable and funny. They truly carry the plot. We have a friendship that everyone wishes they were a part of, a handsome hunk leading the way and even a villainous character who everyone begins to despise. I can see why this book is up there as a hit romance and it hurts that I didn’t connect to this book in the way that I thought I would, but I just couldn’t seem to get past the predictability and cliché feeling of the text - call me a harsh critic!

About The Book:

“When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irreducible force of attraction, it throws one woman’s carefully calculated theories on love into chaos”.

Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis follows the story of PhD scientist Olive Smith's unpredictable journey to true love. The book opens two years prior to the main events - where she first meets Adam Carlsen and accepts an offer to continue her research of pancreatic cancer at Stanford. Almost three years later, we encounter Olive trying to convince her best friend that she still believes in happily ever after and is completely over her ex-boyfriend. Desperate for some fresh ideas, Olive kisses the first man she sees, who turns out to be none other than Adam Carlsen, professor and well-known biology researcher at Stanford. After a series of mishaps, a fake-dating relationship with her ominous professor is agreed upon; a negotiation that begins to be a huge help to both. But, it appears that fake-dating isn't as easy as it may seem...

As their feelings for each other become complicated and Olive's research becomes more and more at stake, the question that is on everyone's mind: what is worth fighting for? Science or Love?