Love, Theoretically
“He says my name like it’s familiar to him. The first word he ever learned. Second nature, and not just a bunch of vowels and consonants he’s barely had reason to use before.”
Ali Hazelwood has made a name for herself in the publishing world with a very specific niche: STEM themed romance novels. Her breakout debut, The Love Hypothesis, followed two biologists; subsequently, Love on the Brain tackled neuroscience. Her three novellas (recently compiled into their own bound book, Loathe to Love You) centered around three engineer best friends. Now, her third novel, Love, Theoretically, gets into what I consider the most fascinating branch of science: physics.
Summary:
Ali Hazelwood meets Helen Huang with her newest narrator, Elsie, a theoretical physicist and adjunct professor by day, fake girlfriend by night, and chronic people pleaser. Elsie Hannaway is a year out of her PhD program and "living the dream." She has a doctorate in theoretical physics, numerous awards for her work with crystals, and plenty of publications, but instead of continuing her research or working on her manuscript, she's an adjunct professor for a myriad of Boston colleges, teaching undergrad physics courses to students who couldn't care less.
Because adjuncting pays so well, Elsie also works as a fake girlfriend through the app Faux, which allows hundreds of eligible Boston bachelors to pay Elsie to come to family events, work parties, or act as arm candy for the night. Through years of practice as peace-keeper for her family, Elsie's expertly honed people pleasing skills let her become whatever version of herself her client needs in the moment. But no, she won't sleep with them.
Elsie's favorite client is Greg, a harmless guy with an incredibly judgmental family. Despite Faux's rules, Elsie and Greg have a longstanding contract where she'll play his fake librarian girlfriend whenever Greg's mother gets on his case about being single. Elsie loves helping Greg, but his brother seems to hate her, for reasons Elsie can't discern.
Meanwhile, in the academic world, Elsie is up for a position at MIT as a tenure-track professor in their physics department, a role that would pay her enough to quit Faux, finally have the healthcare to pay for her Insulin, and would allow her to complete her research on crystals. But, just her luck, who else would be on the hiring committee but Jack Smith-Turner, Greg's prickly older brother, and the author behind the paper that ruined her academic advisor's career, as well as made a joke out of theoretical physics as a field. Of course Jack recognizes Elsie, who never made the connection between Greg's brother and the Jonathon that ruined her advisor's career years prior.
Like any Ali Hazelwood novel, miscommunication, misplaced anger, and a whirlwind romance follow. Once Elsie manages to explain to Jack that she hasn't been lying to his little brother all this time, the pair warm to each other. Nevertheless, Elsie can't stop herself from wondering why Jack wrote the paper that made a farce of theorists and her advisor, especially when it seems like he has so much respect for her work.
As Elsie grows closer to Jack she feels guilty for "betraying" her advisor, but friendship with Jack has shown her that she doesn't need to be afraid of her own opinion, or using her voice instead of molding her personality to fit the needs of the person talking to her. To Elsie's theorist education, falling in love with an experimentalist is the epitome of a disaster, but even she can't deny how happy Jack makes her.
Will Elsie and Jack be fated for doom or destined to succeed? And can a theoretical physicist and experimental physicist ever truly overcome their academic disputes?
Thoughts:
Love, Theoretically is by far my favorite of Hazelwood's STEM love sagas. As a narrator, I found Elsie to not only be incredibly relatable (especially as someone who is about to graduate college), but I also enjoyed her focus of study the most. Hazelwood does such an incredible job layering science with plot, and always ensures the reader will understand even the most complicated of topics without dumbing anything down. The author's note mentions that Love, Theoretically is her most academically focused book, as the plot does spend a great deal of time discussing the politics of science in higher education, particularly the history of fraud, sexism, and laziness amongst the older generation of gatekeeping white men.
Similarly to my love of Elsie, Jack was my favorite love interest by miles and miles. I'm not always the biggest fan of the trope where the man is overly protective of the woman to the point of treating her like she's incapacitated, but Jack was protective of Elsie to the perfect degree. I loved how much he respected her as a scientist regardless of her past or other forms of income, and he made sure to own his wrongdoings and refuse to contribute to the sexism of his colleagues. I never worried for Elsie with Jack, whereas I had some negative feelings at points during Adam and Olive and Bee and Levi's respective romances.
I did want to know more about Elsie's family. I wish Hazelwood had spent more time explaining the dynamic between Elsie and her brothers, as they were written like elementary aged children despite being older than her. Furthermore, I feel like we were given a lot of details to follow about the twins' hijinks without ever meeting them or even getting a flashback to Elsie's childhood growing up with them. I hated Elsie's mom, not just because she was cruel, but because she seemed a little unrealistic. Even the worst parents in the world would understand what getting a doctorate degree meant, and for Elsie's entire family to not know about her level of education or awards in physics felt like a reach.
Overall:
Ali Hazelwood only continues to grow as an author with each publication. Hazelwood brings an element to the table that other romance authors don't: real-life experience in the fields she writes about. As a scientist herself, Hazelwood adds an authentic voice to each of her narrators that I always appreciate.
I saw preliminary reviews of Love, Theoretically that were afraid that this novel would repeat The Love Hypothesis based on the initial summary, but I did not find that to be true. Hazelwood uses her favorite tropes in each book, but plays with and manipulates the situations to be so different from each other that I haven't found anything to be repetitive. My heart ached for Elsie and Jack, and there were definitely points where I wished I could switch places with Elsie, which is how I know it was a good romance.
Fans of Ali Hazelwood's previous novels, Helen Hoang's Kiss Quotient, and Emily Henry's Book Lovers will not be disappointed with Love, Theoretically!
My Rating: 5/5
Goodreads Average: 4.23/5
Information:
Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood (Berkley Press)
Publication Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780593336861 (PB) 9780593638859 (HC)