The Love Hypothesis: A TikTok sensation and must-read STEM romance

The Love Hypothesis

Author: Ali Hazelwood
Genre: Contemporary Romance / STEM Romance / Academic Romance
Book Rating: ⭐ 9/10
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ 3/5

Description

Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting love. Unfortunately, convincing her best friend of that requires evidence—and scientists always want proof.

As a third-year Ph.D. candidate at Stanford, Olive is far more comfortable dealing with research than relationships. But when her best friend, Anh, needs convincing that Olive has happily moved on from a previous relationship, Olive panics and does the only logical thing she can think of.

She kisses the first man she sees.

There's just one very big problem.

That man is Dr. Adam Carlsen, a brilliant young professor with a reputation for being intimidating, brutally honest, and the resident tyrant of Stanford's labs.

Olive expects disaster.

Instead, Adam agrees to become her fake boyfriend.

What begins as a carefully constructed experiment soon involves fake dates, awkward encounters, scientific conferences, and far more chemistry than Olive accounted for. And underneath Adam's notoriously grumpy exterior, she begins discovering a man who is unexpectedly supportive when her academic career is threatened.

The relationship might be fake, but the attraction definitely isn't.

As their experiment starts producing some very unexpected results, Olive is forced to consider the possibility she's spent so long dismissing:

Maybe love isn't something that can be neatly proven or disproven.

And maybe the grumpy professor she accidentally kissed is about to become the most important variable in her life.

Funny, nerdy, swoony, and delightfully awkward, The Love Hypothesis combines fake dating, academia, STEM, and grumpy-sunshine chemistry in a romance about discovering that matters of the heart don't always follow the scientific method.

Tropes / Mood

Fake Dating • Grumpy × Sunshine • STEM Romance • Academia • Ph.D. Student FMC • Professor MMC • Women in STEM • He Falls First • Workplace Proximity • Opposites Attract • Fake Relationship Turns Real • Slow Burn • Academic Conference • Protective MMC • Science & Research • Banter • Nerdy Romance • Open-Door Spice