Review of The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

My Rating: Solid 3 out of 5 stars.

CW: sex, nudity, some violence, cursing, sexism, a scene depicts sexual coercion.

Honestly, I went in thinking I would dislike this book, I don’t know why I particularly pegged Hazelwood as a bad writer-but I was wrong. Sure, she’s a bit corny, and it’s clear this book is Reylo fanfic, but it was cute.

I for one like the trope-y books when they’re done well. Grumpy/Sunshine and fake dating can be really cute when executed well. The romance was reallly cute, and I liked the background romances too. I thought it was really cute, the way their relationship evolved, and the angsty parts fueled the fanfiction-loving part of me that has existed since I was in Middle School.

I thought the writing was really readable too, it was compulsively pretty readable and it was easy to get into reading binges with it. I liked the tone of the novel in the STEM/Academic aspect as well, and I really liked the framing of the story through a PhD/grad school lens. I thought the pacing was okay, it wasn’t perfect, and there were some unbelievable parts, but I think some of that is due in a romance novel like this.

The plot wasn’t super realistic, but I’m really not going into these books with the expectation of it being “realistic” in the same way. I don’t really go into a book thinking that it’ll be the pinacle of realism unless it’s non-fiction. But even for a romance novel, some of the events just felt like they were reinforcing the “big guy” and “little lady” dynamic. Which on its own isn’t a bad thing, but it did feel a bit oversaturated in that department.

I liked Olive a lot, I felt like she was a good main character, Carlsen, however, was a little harder to deal with, and the other characters just felt a bit too flat. Especially Tom and Anh. Some of the motivations just felt too caricatured for my taste.

Overall, I liked the writing, the protagonist, and the basic plot. I just felt like there were parts where it either fell short, or fell too far on the other side and kind of overdid it. But I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this book and I definitely want to read more of Hazelwood’s writing. I was definitely thinking of reading Bride next.