The Love Hypothesis – Ali Hazelwood

I’ve previously read and loved a couple of Ali Hazelwood’s books, so I decided to go all the way back to the beginning and read her debut, The Love Hypothesis, the “#BookTok sensation” that popularised the women-in-STEM-romance microgenre. And, dear reader, I must say: I kind of wish I hadn’t.

All of the ingredients are there. The Love Hypothesis is a fake dating story in an academic setting, with a determined heroine and a brooding hero. Olive is a post-grad in biology at Stanford, hoping to find a new early detection protocol for the pancreatic cancer that killed her mother. She impulsively kisses one of the professors in her department, dark and antagonistic Adam, in the hopes of persuading her best friend that she has an active love life.

Olive and Adam quickly realise that they both have a lot to gain if their circles believe they’re in a relationship. Olive’s best friend will be able to date Olive’s ex without worrying that Olive is still hung up on him (sorry if that sounds confusing, there’s really no other way to explain it), and Adam will convince his bosses that he’s committed to staying in California so they’ll release new funds for his research. Naturally, the solution is for Adam and Olive to pretend that they’re dating.

The Love Hypothesis should be deliciously good fun, right? Alas…

By the end of the first chapter, I was sick of hearing about how tall Adam is, and how large his hands are. That feeling did not abate as I read The Love Hypothesis, as the frequency of mentions (with “mouth twitches” thrown in for good mentions) only increases as the story proceeds.

That’s a minor quibble in the scheme of things, though. If you have two firing synapses to rub together, you’ll see every ‘twist’ in The Love Hypothesis coming from a mile away. Even if you’re completely unfamiliar with the tropes of the romance genre, or academic settings, the story doesn’t so much ‘signpost’ what’s to come as it does put up giant billboards saying ‘THIS IS WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT’. Of course the anonymous Boston ‘collaborator’ that Adam is working with is the same Boston academic that Olive approaches for lab access. Of course the ‘nice guy’ is revealed to be a villain (he is absurdly over-the-top, especially once his true nature is revealed).

What’s worse is that Olive is annoyingly obtuse. Even accounting for the “STEM academics have no emotional intelligence” stereotype, she is just unbelievably dense (and I mean that in the literal sense; I cannot believe that a twenty-something woman working in cancer research has this much trouble reading people). “Oh, he flushes when he sees me, no idea what that could mean,” she thinks (repeatedly). Honestly, Olive’s wilful ignorance is the only driver of the plot. If she could communicate directly about emotions – or if she’d done even ten minutes of therapy in her life – The Love Hypothesis wouldn’t be a story.

If The Love Hypothesis was the first Ali Hazelwood book you read and it put you off her for life, I honestly wouldn’t blame you… but I would gently encourage you to check out some of her later work. Books like Not In Love bear very little resemblance to this amateurish mess.

Read The Love Hypothesis on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of The Love Hypothesis:

• “The extent of Adam’s character development is that his mouth “curved” and “twitched” EVERY SINGLE TIME he spoke to Olive. Don’t fall for the glowing reviews and accolades, another piece of trash from the contemporary fiction landscape” – Laila
• “The story is told in first person by a 24-year-old graduate student, it read like it was written by a 24-year-old drop out.” – joanieD
• “I really tried to keep reading it, but it was as bland as the paper it was written on.” – Glenda Kale Sjolander
• “This book got marketed as the epitome of “representation for Women in STEM” and as someone who is a (non-white latina) woman in STEM I gotta say: this turd doesn’t represent me, and it certainly isn’t something I needed to feel “accepted” in STEM.” – Sophie