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ellajingreads's review against another edition
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
My expectations were low when I started this book. I remember hearing about this book so much around booktok, and Twitter as well, that's why I put off reading this book because I wanted the hype to die down before getting into this one. But actually, I was in indefinite book slump when this came out that's why I wasn't reading ANYTHING lol.
Anyway, as I was in the middle of binge-reading the Bridgerton series I decided to read this one for a palette cleanser. And boy was I so thankful I decided on picking this one.
The story started with immediately introducing our two main characters Olive and Adam, and their relationship, or lack thereof. I thought it would be your typical enemies-turned-lovers where they had to fake date because of a certain reason, and then eventually fall for each other because of forced proximity. BUT NO, IT WASN'T. Okay, there were some parts that were definitely cliche BUT if you're like me and simple things makes you happy then this book is for you.
I thought the science-y things would bore me because I read somewhere that readers just skip those parts. So, I assumed that those parts would be long and boring, but no don't let the setting intimidate you because it was only some parts, and you could totally breeze thru it.
To say I loved every bit of Olive and Adam's banter, and character development together would be an understatement. I've always loved quirky female leads, and Olive easily became one of my favorites. The Love Hypothesis isn't just some story that you'd forget after reading because it was that good. I'd be definitely adding this to my reread-ables.
Anyway, as I was in the middle of binge-reading the Bridgerton series I decided to read this one for a palette cleanser. And boy was I so thankful I decided on picking this one.
The story started with immediately introducing our two main characters Olive and Adam, and their relationship, or lack thereof. I thought it would be your typical enemies-turned-lovers where they had to fake date because of a certain reason, and then eventually fall for each other because of forced proximity. BUT NO, IT WASN'T. Okay, there were some parts that were definitely cliche BUT if you're like me and simple things makes you happy then this book is for you.
I thought the science-y things would bore me because I read somewhere that readers just skip those parts. So, I assumed that those parts would be long and boring, but no don't let the setting intimidate you because it was only some parts, and you could totally breeze thru it.
To say I loved every bit of Olive and Adam's banter, and character development together would be an understatement. I've always loved quirky female leads, and Olive easily became one of my favorites. The Love Hypothesis isn't just some story that you'd forget after reading because it was that good. I'd be definitely adding this to my reread-ables.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual harassment, Animal cruelty, Violence, Terminal illness, Sexism, and Sexual content
Moderate: Death of parent
amy_in_the_city's review against another edition
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Meh. There wasn't anything I really disliked about this book, but I just didn't feel anything for the main couple. The banter felt forced. I did like that the female main character was demisexual.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Death of parent, Alcohol, Death, Animal cruelty, and Cancer
llychu's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
would i recommend this? yes if youre looking for a rom-com but in a book + make it a little more rated-R + it is made VERY clear that this was written by a milennial
5 words: fluffy, knee-high, unicorn socks
ok i did enjoy reading this like it was a very fun read
but ngl once they went on that trip to the conference or wtvr like it was just picking up TOO fast
romcom vibes at least but it was just sosososoooooo millenial
like i cant even emphasize how millenial it is
5 words: fluffy, knee-high, unicorn socks
ok i did enjoy reading this like it was a very fun read
but ngl once they went on that trip to the conference or wtvr like it was just picking up TOO fast
romcom vibes at least but it was just sosososoooooo millenial
like i cant even emphasize how millenial it is
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Sexual harassment
Minor: Cancer and Death of parent
her best friend feels like she was js there for diversity points fr 😭 whenever she was mentioned it would always be about her advocating for bipoc women in stem like yes girl go get em 😍 but it was js so over-referenced it js felt like she had no depth at all 😭 same goes for other characters w/ having 0 depth… i only gave it a 3⭐️ cs it was giving romcom vibes and was fun and lighthearted, otherwise it had 0 substance 💀j_evans's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
0.75
I’m disappointed that the only book I’ve read about a PhD student includes harassment and assault. Very common in academia, but the book doesn’t condemn it . It has instead become a large part of its appeal.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual harassment and Sexual assault
koistyfishy's review against another edition
emotional
funny
inspiring
lighthearted
fast-paced
- 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
3.5 Pumpkin Spice Stars ⭐️
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual harassment
Moderate: Cancer and Death of parent
gemloukay's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- 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
In an effort to convince her best friend that she’s over a guy she was seeing, student Olive kisses moody and unapproachable professor Adam Carlson. Only she didn’t realise the random guy that she grabbed on the corridor was Adam and now she’s fake dating him. Or is she? Adam seems all too happy to go along with it too, for some reason.
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!
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!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Sexual harassment and Gaslighting
Minor: Death of parent
charlotteay's review against another edition
lighthearted
slow-paced
- 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
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual harassment, Cancer, Abandonment, and Death of parent
zoenelson's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
- 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
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny and Sexual harassment
Minor: Death of parent
readyforit's review against another edition
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- 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
3⭐️1.5🌶️(slow burn and only one scene but it’s very descriptive)
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 shenot think Adam would believe her?? Bad things happen to women in academia all the time, and he obviously cared about her.
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual harassment
mltillery99's review against another edition
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Ok... A rollercoaster of thoughts.
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. Of course Harvard guy (Tom) is Adam's professional collaborator. Of course Adam's size (big, large, huge, tall, etc.) is a recurring theme throughout the book - By chapter 2, it already became a bit repetitive.
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual harassment