The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Title: The Love Hypothesis
Author: Ali Hazelwood
Series: The Love Hypothesis #1
Published by: Penguin Audio
Release Date: September 14, 2021
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Callie Dalton
Length: 11 hours and 8 minutes
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Romantic Comedy
Potential Triggers: View Spoiler »workplace sexual harrassment « Hide Spoiler
Source: Libby
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2022 Audiobook Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ IndieBound ✩ iTunes ✩ Libro.FM
My rating:

Blurb:

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

As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.

That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs.

Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.

My Review:

3.5 stars — There were some absolutely shining moments in this book, moments where I laughed out loud, steamy moments that definitely worked for me.  But there were also some little nitpicky things that bothered me, and if you know me at all, you know I’m not huge on miscommunication stuff in books.  And this book was basically one giant lack of communication…  So while I still enjoyed it, I can honestly say I didn’t enjoy it as much as most people.

I will start off by saying that I think listening to the book with Ms. Dalton’s narration was a huge plus for me.  She does all the interpreting for me, and she nailed so much of the banter between Olive and Adam.

Olive is a bit of a difficult heroine to love.  I really enjoyed her, and I admired her in so many ways — it was nice to have a super smart heroine pursuing a difficult career, especially for women.  I really enjoyed the way those topics were broached through Olive, even if they were painful at times.  I also really connected with Olive on the loss of a parent at such a young age, especially to a fast moving cancer (mildly triggering for me), and how that can affect you.  I admired how she took that painful history and focused it on something good and worthy.  Unfortunately, she was a major reason why the communication between our couple was so awful, and it became a bit frustrating.

Without having Adam’s POV, it was hard to get a read on him for much of the time.  He’s so quiet, and brusque I guess.  But, again, I think this was another case where Ms. Dalton’s narration gave something in the subtleties.  I could feel how he felt about Olive, without him saying anything.  And I could see that a lot of his reputation came from grad students egging each other on, because he demanded a high standard.  And he was adorable with Olive — even if she couldn’t see his feelings, *I* could.

I really enjoyed the two of them together.  Their banter was delightful, and it was fun to watch them awkwardly maneuver around one another.  I could have used about 50% less poor communication in their story, but that’s just me.  It’s not that I wasn’t given reasons why Olive was like that, but it’s just frustrating and not what I enjoy reading the most.

Anh and Malcolm were hilarious, as was Holden.  I loved what these friends added to the story.

So what were my little nitpicks?  OK, first you gotta understand that I get irrationally annoyed and protective about being Canadian.  It was patently obvious that the author may not know much about Canada, so *WHY* would you make your heroine from there?  I mean, seriously?  We eat moose hearts??  Olive’s from Toronto!!  I don’t even think folks in the territories eat moose hearts, but TO?  Um no.  Also, just as a weird aside for anyone who wants to learn something bizarre about us Canadians, we use a very complicated blend of imperial and metric measurements.  There’s a flow chart in a meme somewhere.

The other nitpick has to do with Olive’s pretty obvious ace spectrum-ness.  As someone who now understands there’s a spectrum (and that she’s on it), it gets a bit frustrating when it’s not acknowledged as a real thing, but instead touted by the character as “something’s wrong with me”.  Olive self-describes essentially demi or gray ace.  And as predicted, she mentions more than once how something’s wrong with her.  *sigh*  There’s every possibility that this character is based off the author’s own experiences, so it may not be malice so much as ignorance.  But you know what I wish for in 2022?  I think it would be great if author’s (in general) started researching and understanding the ace spectrum, and embracing it…or just stop using “asexual” in the old, restrictive context.  It’s just starting to feel like a trope or a plot device to showcase how “this hero” is so different from the others.  And…that makes Lenore cranky.  Demisexual is a thing, look it up.

ANYWAYS.  Despite those super weird nitpicks (I appear to be in a *MOOD*), I really did enjoy a lot of this book.  I’m even a bit curious enough to check out other books by this author.  Hopefully with less communication issues, otherwise we just might not be a match.