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koistyfishy's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Spicy Level: 🌶️/5
Spicy Level (With Adam Bonus Chapter): 🌶️🌶️/5
Hypothesis: Any book by Ali Hazelwood will start great but will end as a disappointment.
This is what you get when you couple a smart but stupid pathological liar and a grumpy scientist and say "Now Kiss". The Love Hypothesis was the second book I picked up by Ali Hazelwood and the one that everybody told me I should’ve read first.
It had the foundation to be perfect! Thinking back to my time in a university lab it was like I was running a perfect experiment. I was set up with excellent reagents, and superbly clean glassware (if I do say so myself) and everything appeared to be going well. But somewhere something turned, a temperature setting was wrong or the wrong solvent was used for the chromatography column. In the end, whilst the reaction did yield some results, the expected yield was significantly lower and utterly disappointing.
This is a single POV that follows Olive, she is a Biology Graduate Student and to persuade her best friend that it is okay for her to date her ex-boyfriend instead of having an adult conversation about thoughts and feelings she decides to lie to her friend and kisses Dr Adam Carlton. Then proceeds to deepen the lie by roping him into a scheme to pretend to be her boyfriend so that her best friend doesn’t feel bad. Some stuff about pancreatic cancer also adds to the plot...
Olive is what I would describe as the stupidest smart person I have ever encountered and is nothing but a pathological liar. As someone whose career is built on scientific fact and truth the ease at which the opposite can come out of her mouth is a little bit concerning. She is insecure and (like I am starting to believe all Ali Hazelwood's FMCs) - she is not like the "other girls". Because being a woman in STEM means that you have to be ditzy or strange or have some quirk or wear rainbow-coloured knee-high socks that make you seem "special". Because you can't just be a regular person who studies something in STEM like anybody else.
Poor poor POOOOOR Adam Carlton, the man who has clearly been in love with Olive since he first saw her. If felt like every time Olive and he would have a conversation she would insult is actions, behaviour and methods of teaching. She would talk based on other people's opinions - of what she has been told and would completely lambaste the poor traumatised man for having standards for his students in ONE OF THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS SCIENCE PROGRAMS IN THE WORLD... but no...being grumpy is a crime. I don't think for the majority of the book she had one nice thing to say to him and he was still besotted with her. I also wish I knew what he liked to eat because any mention of food was just how he didn't like it or how it tasted of feet...like besides broccoli what does this man enjoy besides Olive(s)....
Now don't get me wrong - I was enjoying this. The actual writing was so good in the start - I was eating it up, I loved the rom-com tropes thrown in (even if they were just added for the hook) up until... read if you don't care about spoilers(view spoiler)
The amount of lack of communication and lies made Olive seem childish and immature and her actions just irritated me beyond the enjoyment of the book I just wanted it to end so I didn't have to deal with what felt drawn out and unnecessary. It didn't help that the plot felt recycled from Love on the Brain (even though that one was probably recycled from this...).
Trope Summary:
▶ Woman in STEM Representation
▶ Fake Dating
▶ "She Falls First" but actually he did years ago
▶ One Bed
▶ Hates Everyone But Her
▶ Workplace/College Setting
▶ Age Gap
▶ Grumpy X Sunshine
Overall I don't know what to think of Ali Hazelwood - everyone loves her books but I just feel like for the second time in a row my hypothesis keeps being proven and I don't know if I have it in me to risk repeating another experiment with the same disappointed results.
Graphic: Sexual harassment
Moderate: Cancer and Death of parent
gemloukay's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
As always with Ali Hazelwood, it’s a lovely STEM romance with a bit of spice. I loved that he was as unsure as she was and that the science is always accurate enough not to annoy me as a fellow biologist!
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Sexual harassment and Gaslighting
Minor: Death of parent
charlotteay's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Moderate: Sexual harassment, Cancer, Abandonment, and Death of parent
zoenelson's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Moderate: Misogyny and Sexual harassment
Minor: Death of parent
readyforit's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
This was my third Ali hazelwood book and I could tell it was her first. I didn’t like it as much as check & mate or bride. It was an okay book if you went through bio 1 in college so you can understand all the science references she makes. However, it did induce flashbacks. It seems like if you’ve read one Ali hazelwood book, you’ve read them all. Every one of her MMC is secretly obsessed with the FMC and the FMC is clueless about it, even though there are neon signs. In this book, however, I didn’t really feel the tension or chemistry. Maybe Adam is just such a closed-off character we barely ever get a glimpse of his feelings? I didn’t even feel like the way they finally got together was satisfying because of what happened to olive beforehand. And why did she
If you can suspend belief or think of it as a fanfic I think you’ll enjoy it. Otherwise there are plenty of other books where the MMC is truly obsessed with the FMC and doesn’t date a graduate student in the same department, which is iffy. I won’t be rereading, but it was an okay book.
Moderate: Sexual harassment
melllllting's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
To start, I listened to the audiobook version and I truly couldn't stand the reader's voice. Not off to a great start. So much of the writing was cringe-worthy and predictable. Like of course Olive loves pumpkin spice.
The writing style, a mix of Olive's internal monologue and third-person perspective, didn't quite work for me either. There is a part of me that wishes I didn't listen to the bonus chapter from Adam's perspective, too, because his internal monologue was just a bit disturbing to me.
Also, I work in higher education and have been a graduate student for a few years now and I found it hard to relate to Olive's academic experiences. Maybe it's just because I'm not a STEM girlie.
Overall, reading this book was like watching Love is Blind - so bad but so entertaining at the same time.
Moderate: Sexual harassment
lia_persi's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Moderate: Sexual harassment
corrieroe's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Graphic: Sexual harassment, Gaslighting, Sexism, Misogyny, and Sexual content
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, Cancer, Death of parent, and Bullying
Minor: Alcohol and Eating disorder
orneela's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
Graphic: Sexual content
Minor: Sexual harassment
Una escena de sexo bastante descriptiva. Y una escena de acoso por parte de un profesor a una alumna (ambos mayores de edad).ecmiller's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Moderate: Sexual harassment, Sexism, Cancer, Grief, Death of parent, and Medical trauma