Review: Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

 

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Publication Date: June 13th 2023 by Berkley & Penguin Audio

Pages: 368

Audio Book Length: 12hrs 33min

Narrator: Thérèse Plummer

Source: Publisher

Rating: ★★★★★

Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Libro.fm | Audible | Goodreads

My Thoughts:

Elsie is barely making ends meet as an adjunct teacher, so she takes on a side job being a fake date for those in need.  However, there’s light at the end of the tunnel because she’s interviewing for her dream job. To her horror Jack Smith, the brother of one of her fake-date customers is on the panel set to interview her. Jack knew her as her brother’s librarian girlfriend, suspiciously perfect, but finding out she’s one of the physicist interviewees and lying to his brother puts his back up. Thankfully, this farce doesn’t go very far.

I adored both Elsie and Jack and rooted for their romance! They had such an intense connection right from the beginning and I loved that neither played games! After years of adapting herself to please others, being with Jack, who wanted her honesty, was refreshing and a relief to Elsie. These two brought out the best in each other!  And my goodness, this romance was spicy! But, thankfully, not just sex, sex, sex either. Their interactions were so fun, so delicious, I just couldn’t put this story down!

Love, Theoretically is my favorite Ali Hazelwood to date! My review doesn’t do the story justice. I’ll just tell you that I absolutely loved this romance so hard! One of my favorites of 2023!

I alternately read an e-copy and listened to the audio version. Thérèse Plummer’s performance, as usual, was excellent! Both her female and male voices were wonderful! I listened at my usual 1.5x normal speed. A definite recommend!

5 Stars

Book Description:

Rival physicists collide in a vortex of academic feuds and fake dating shenanigans in this delightfully STEMinist romcom from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis and Love on the Brain.

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 broody 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 that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, 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?