The Love Hypothesis – Ali Hazelwood

Wow, what a book. Considering the crazy hype surrounding this contemporary romance, I had my expectations set high, and Ali Hazelwood definitely did not disappoint!

Plot

The Love Hypothesis follows Olive, a Ph.D. graduate student at Stanford University who gets herself caught up in a fake-dating romance. 

Olive “accidentally” kisses Doctor Adam Carleson, a hotshot professor, and a well-known ass when trying to convince her best friend that she is dating someone, giving her friend full permission to date Olive’s ex. Despite the plan working, and her best friend, Anh, knowing that she’s over her ex, Olive had no idea that she was kissing the Doctor Carleson, who often has graduate students running, crying from his office. As Anh expects Olive to be dating Adam, they both agree that they will fake-date, allowing Anh and her expectations to be met, and Adam’s research funds to be unfrozen as the grant committee will realize his seriousness of staying at Stanford University and not being a flight risk. 

Can Olive and Adam keep up the crazy charade of fake dating without falling into the inevitable trap of enjoying their time together? 

Characters

I want to start with Olive because she was the main character and I have quite a few things to say. Despite the fact that she’s an incredibly talented scientist with a brilliant mind, Olive often acts super immaturely. Maybe it’s the writing style, but maybe it’s her character, either way, her character often read like a Wattpad fanfiction character which I’m not quite sure that I enjoyed. However, her personality was something that maybe won her over me. She was able to defy the typical stereotypes of scientists with her pumpkin spice lattes, unicorn knee-high socks, and love for sugary foods. Again, this does connect back to her immaturity a little bit, I mean who comes to a biology conference with knee-high unicorn socks? Regardless, her unique personality was something that made me a little more excited to like her character and learn more about her. 

Adam was a character that came out of nowhere. Somehow he was an ass, but somehow he was the sweetest man ever. There were so many instances throughout the book where I was so confused about my feelings for Adam. As a love interest, he genuinely had me feeling some type of way (which is always a good thing), and his small remarks of affection had me caught in his grasp (of his very large hands ?). 

Setting

As far as the setting goes, we were able to see Stanford, as well as a bit of Boston, and both settings were super enjoyable for me. Being in a lab setting was such a fun experience to read about, especially considering I’m doing a ton of labs myself. It’s a setting that I don’t often get to read about so it was quite refreshing to be put in a biology lab. 

Writing 

The writing style was interesting, to say the least. As mentioned before, there were times when the writing style had me thinking that this was some sort of fanfiction that hadn’t been revised properly, however, the majority of the book was genuinely good and had me caught up in the words. Ali Hazelwood was so surprisingly amazing with the writing style and I enjoyed seeing the characters come to life in my head. 

In Conclusion… 

To say that I couldn’t put this book down would be a major understatement. To be exact, I finished the book in one sitting in a total of five hours, intending to read one chapter. (Yes, I did read this entire book instead of studying for finals). 

Rating: 4.5/5⭐