Title: Love, Theoretically

Author: Ali Hazelwood

Publisher: Berkley 2023

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Pages: 389

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 52 Book Club - Enemies to Lovers

Spice Rating: 5

The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.
 
Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and arrogant older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And he’s the same Jack Smith who rules over the physics department at MIT, standing right between Elsie and her dream job.
 
Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?

I absolutely adored The Love Hypothesis and hoped that this one would be another winner. But, I apparently am a bit over Hazelwood’s romances. I was very annoyed with Elsie throughout most of the book. She was so oblivious to her issues that I wanted to shake her. I just really wanted to see more growth and acknowledgment throughout the book. The romance with Jack felt very one-sided. I loved Jack, but his feelings and issues were completely pushed to the back because of Elsie. I wanted more of a partnership in the romance. And I’m coming to realize that I don’t like Hazelwood’s sex scenes. They are very graphic, but not really well written and steamy enough for me. I keep reading her books and coming away with wanting more.

Next up on the TBR pile: