""'He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.'" Holden popped a bit of fortune cookie in his mouth, blinking at the message inside. "Is that shade?" He looked around, indignant. "Did this fortune cookie just throw shade at me?""
After completing my Red Queen series marathon, a cheesy romantic comedy was clearly welcomed. My choice fell on The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood which I had heard nothing but good things about. In the spirit of science and all, here is my hypothesis: I made a very entertaining choice.
As I finished all the chapters today except for the prologue that I read yesterday, I suppose you could consider it to be a one-sitting read. Following the story of a third-year Ph.D. candidate named Olive Smith, The Love Hypothesis is a book exploring the theme of women in STEM. Having just discovered that her date might have hit it off with her very best friend in the world, Olive is desperate to prove that she is totally fine. But Anh doesn't want to break the girl code even when Olive explicitly asks her to. To erase the doubt forever, Olive claims that she has moved on and dated another; she even goes as far as kissing a random dude in the middle of the night just to prove a point. Unfortunately for her, that someone turns out to be the infamous lab tyrant Dr. Adam Carlsen.
Without her even knowing, she is now in the chaos that is her own life. Adam agrees to fake-date her for his own reasoning, but what started as something stupid and fake eventually leaves Olive wanting more. And she is obviously petrified by the idea.
If my memory serves me right, it was honestly my first time reading a book STEM-related, and while I wasn't familiar with all the science talks (which seemed so cool by the way), the experience actually left me wanting more. Women in STEM was a rep I never thought I needed until I read it myself. Everything about the lab, the experiments, and the scientific discoveries, albeit a bit exaggerated, made the book all the more nuanced.
Just like rom-coms usually did, The Love Hypothesis easily hooked me with its amusing main leads and their playful banters. The result was pretty clear: I laughed a lot at that. It maybe had to do with the fact that our main character Olive was very easy to like. She was witty in the charming, intellectual way, while Adam was that broody-and-sullen-but-secretly-kind type. Although it did feel like the book was quite lacking in details when it came to the character's description, I certainly had so much fun with both Olive and Adam (even if, well... Adam is too impossibly good to be true).
With great characters come great intrigue. Olive's friendship with Ahn and Malcolm was easy to dote on also and so I was actually hoping to see more of the trio together. It didn't happen as much as I wanted it to be but overall it was quite enough. All in all, the story flowed really well, and before I even knew it, I had spent half of the day in the lens of Olive's.
In conclusion, The Love Hypothesis was funny, entertaining, and cute. There were some unrealistic parts somewhere along the way, and I wouldn't lie, some scenes felt a bit cheesy; but it's rom-com and I loved it. It certainly is the kind of book that I would recommend to fellow rom-com lovers.
Actual rating: 4.2★
