The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

*minor spoilers ahead*

This book is centred around a fake relationship between third-year PHD student Olive Smith and the young professor Adam Carlsen. Olive doesn’t believe in lasting romantic relationships, but her best friend does, and that’s what got her into this situation. Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees, who happens to be Adam, known for his intense, usually rude demeanour. This is why Olive is super surprised when he agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference doesn’t go to plan, and Adam surprises her again with his support and comfort, their little experiment doesn’t feel so fake anymore.

I’m not usually a big fan of the fake-dating trope, but I did enjoy it in The Love of My Afterlife, so I wanted to give it a go, especially after seeing how popular this book is online. I also heard that The Love Hypothesis is being made into a film, so I wanted to make sure I’d read the book first.

This wasn’t my favourite book ever, but I enjoyed it as a nice, light-hearted read. There’s decent humour too; sometimes it’s a little cringe, but it worked with the tropes in the book. I did become a bit frustrated, as most of the time, simple communication would have fixed the issues. However, the story picked up a lot after the halfway mark, which improved the book a lot for me, with the conference being the best part of the book.

‘Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.’ – pg 198

Overall, I found this to be a predictable story, but that’s what made it heartwarming as we got a happy ending. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel super connected to the characters, and I wish Hazelwood had gone into more detail with them, for example, with Olive and her mother’s death, to give them more depth. But for a quick and easy read, I’m still glad I picked it up!

3/5 stars