The Love Hypothesis
by Ali Hazelwood [2021]
Page Count : 315 (Paperback)
Genre : Romance, Humor, Young Adult, Chick-Lit, Contemporary Fiction, RomCom,2023-read.
My Rating : 3/5 ⭐⭐⭐
New York Times Best Seller, Tik Tok Sensation.
Brief Outline
This is the story of love that develops between a PhD student Olive and a biology professor Adam at Stanford. Adam has a reputation for being a moody, unfriendly and highly extracting professor to students - in short, a dick. Olive is a regular, girl next door kind of character who wants to research into detection techniques of pancreatic cancer having suffered a personal grievance in her earlier life. Due to circumstances, they start fake dating and slowly start falling in love with each other. They can no longer deny the attraction they feel for each other. Against all odds and other hostile situations that arise - in the form of a jealous competitor - they stick together and take it long term.
My Impressions
I am on the whole underwhelmed. I enjoyed the writing and I am not saying this is a bad book. There are some moments where I was thoroughly enjoying myself. Then there are some moments where I wanted to throw the book against the wall .. I wished the story was getting somewhere - that there was some real hurdle that is being tackled.
I felt the story engaging and intriguing, fun, witty while Olive and Adam are fake dating - trying to hide their mutual attraction and yet doing basic lovers' stuff. They move into a serious love territory and it kind of fell flat for me. Nothing different from any other romance book we buy at a thrift store. Steamy and hot sex scene midway through the book - I usually feel squeamish and cringe reading explicit sex scenes and this is a loaded one.
I thought the characters are just ok. Olive is not exactly a sun shine personality but she has her fun moments. Adam is someone who is contradiction in itself. He is supposed to be taciturn and withdrawn but he has no inhibitions indulging in the physical game or playful verbal banters with Olive. He who is hard on every one else singles her out for excessive kindness and gentleness. His physical strength and mental capabilities/accomplishments felt blown out of proportion - is it a human we are reading about or a vampire/demigod?
Books based on relationship between a tutor and a student are not new. Like in My Dark Vanessa, they are usually dealt in a dark vein and frowned upon. Usually, its like the girl being exploited and taken advantage of. In this book, it is almost celebrated and Adam even gets his grants released because of this relationship. I felt it odd on so many levels.
Goodreads link
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56732449-the-love-hypothesis