Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Rating: ✩✩✩✩✩ 

Ali Hazelwood has really hit her stride here. While Love, Theoretically will hit all the tropes that readers expect from her STEM romances, this book seemed to make a real jump in writing quality and character development. Granted this is short-handed by making the FMC specifically a people-pleaser to the point of being a non-entity. However, Hazelwood pulls off her character growth without it feeling trite or out of character. The MMC has more depth than just "grumpy and silent" (though I will say these books do a really good job of showing the wildly disparate expectations of performing social norms seen between men and women in STEM fields, but I do digress), even if the tragic backstory took a little too much work to shoehorn in there. The great mystery of Jack's behavior and Elsie's "lies" are anything but hard to figure out, and there is some lag when we have to watch two seemingly smart people connect literally zero dots. Spice here is OK. It is perfect for the character arcs, though readers who enjoyed pervious work's sex-scenes might not enjoy the deviation from the classic recipe. Overall though, the plot is solid, the characters are well-developed and while the successful formula is still there, this one moves beyond self-insert-manic-pixie-dream girls/neanderthal boys and into a solid contemporary romance that will appeal to all lovers of the genre. I am already excited to see more STEM romance so I hope Hazelwood keeps up the great series.

Published on 13 June 2023 by Little Brown Books

Book #86  of 2023