Love, Theoretically
Love, Theoretically
By: Ali Hazelwood
[This book was nominated for the ‘Best Romance’ category of the 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge ]
“It’s complicated, being a woman in STEM. Even more so when you’re young and unproven. And even more so when you have a semi-pathological need to get along with others.”
This is an enemies to lovers rom-com between a cheese-loving, coffee-hating (preach!) theoretical physicist (Elsie) who studies liquid crystals and a very muscled, Henley wearing, experimental physicist (Jack) who can basically do whatever he wants because he’s famous, and also did I mention he has muscles?
Disclaimer: You do not need to know what liquid crystals are. Just keep picturing the exact wrong thing, like I do. It won’t matter. And if you do actually understand this weird state of matter, you are superior.
I wish there was a PG-13 version of this book! There was a lot to like in here. Unfortunately, the profanity (everywhere) and sexual content (mainly in chapters 19-22) definitely make this a novel for a mature audience.
How spicy are those few chapters? If I were to put it on Buffalo Wild Wings spectrum of spicy, it would probably roll in around the Mango Habenero heat. I actually have a whole section of my review dedicated to this if you need more information.
This was my first Ali Hazelwood book. Her book, The Love Hypothesis (2021), became uber popular and I believe it’s also being made into a movie. She is known for writing romcom novels about women in STEM. Which I think is amazing!
I enjoy reading about a main character who is not just intelligent, but intelligent in the sciences, who is secure in her knowledge and ability to do her career and get the job she wants. And not only is she legitimately smart, she has a great sense of humor. Especially if you can understand all her science jokes.
I also really liked that Elsie has a really good friendship with her roommate. They’re both weird in their own ways, but very supportive as they live their own lives.
In case you were wondering, I am not in academia. I’m like the opposite of Elsie. Elsie is a physicist who got her PhD in theoretical physics. I’m an art major. I guess we overlap in terms of abstract concepts and a lot of matter that doesn’t make sense to most people.
But the point is… I cannot say one way or the other whether her science should be fact-checked. I have no idea if she is accurately portraying the field or the academic politics in the world of professors and research scientists. Honestly, I don’t even know if liquid crystals is a real thing. But if she’s fabricating, she’s a real good pretender.
It was a whole new world of characters that aren’t typically written about and I enjoyed being there.
A Brief Summary
This is your classic enemies to lovers romcom story-line.
Elsie has her PhD in theoretical physics and works as an adjunct professor teaching classes at three different universities. She has diabetes and no health insurance and is barely making ends meet to get herself the insulin she needs.
To counter this financial deficit, she started ‘fake-dating’ people. An app people can use to hire others to pretend to be their dates for things.
Her latest client is Greg. He’s hired her for multiple family occasions because he is gay and has not come out to his family yet. To get them off his back about getting married, he’s using Elsie as a shield.
Enter Jack. Greg’s brother.
Wearing his “Haute couture by Chuck Norris.”
He is skeptical of her relationship with his brother. And also he has the hots for her.
“He just studies me— attentive, calm, like he knows something secret about me. That I floss once a week, tops. That I can’t figure out what the Dow Jones is, even after reading the Wikipedia entry. Other, scarier, darker things.”
The main animosity here is that both Jack and Elsie are physicists. But Jack is an EXPERIMENTAL physicist while Elsie is a THEORETICAL physicist. [Thank goodness for spellcheck… I’ve misspelled physicist every time I’ve typed it]
To make matters worse, Elsie is interviewing for a major job change that would give her health insurance and allow her to do the research she wants to do without the teaching she hates (including all the annoying— yet hilarious— emails she receives from her students asking if they can pay their tuition in dogecoin).
“Teaching load: 100 percent. Despair load: incalculable.”
“All I want is to spend my days solving hydrodynamic equations to calculate the large-scale spatiotemporal chaos exhibited by dry active nematics. And maybe, if possible, buy life-compatible levels of pancreatic hormones at reasonable prices.”
Jack is on the search committee conducting the interviews, has major influence, and is known for hating theorists. In fact, years ago he ruined the entire field by submitting a prank paper on theoretical physics to an esteemed journal where it somehow got through and became the laughing stock of the science world.
So Elsie wants to hate Jack:
“I always had a bad feeling about him, and last night— that’s why he’s so good at Go. He was a physicist all along, that— that piece of Uranus—”
"Science insult. Nice.”
"I bet he thinks in Fahrenheit—”
"Ooh, sick burn."
But he’s “the electron to my nucleus… constantly spinning around me” and they can’t help but be attracted to each other. Because that’s how science neutrons work.
And really, her hatred isn’t very believable in the book. She’s just trying to convince herself to hate him because she’s afraid of her real feelings.
Thus, this book is correctly titled- Love, Theoretically— because it’s not love actually. Yet.
It’s a theory.
Jack has Elsie figured out, but it’s not until Elsie discovers there is more to Jack when the sparks really start to fly. Because chemical reactions. Science. (Have I convinced you of my science knowledge yet?)
The Spice Factor
As mentioned before, there is some graphic sexual content in this book. You can probably come away unscathed by it if you just skip chapters 19-22.
I am not an avid romance reader. My concept of what ‘graphic sexual content’ is may be skewed. I have no clue. There’s an entire genre called Erotica so I’m sure this isn’t the worst you could read. I don’t want to be able to explain to you from personal experience where this is on the spectrum. Use your best judgement.
But based on my personal preferences on what I want to read, this had stuff that went too far and too detailed.
So imagine my shock when I read this:
“Jack and I did a bunch of things that high schoolers today would barely consider a quarter of first base...”
What?!
I must be very naive to what is happening in high schools right now. It is ridiculous if what they did was not even first base. Clearly they don’t understand how baseball works.
Plus some of it isn’t realistic. Like the fact that he didn’t have “rotten-eggy morning breath.” Everyone has bad breath in the morning. It’s an unfortunate staple of life.
Anyway, I know a lot of readers won’t hold the same views of sex that I do, so I’ll try not to belabor the point.
But if Ali Hazelwood should read my review: Can you PLEASE make PG-13 versions of your books for people like me?
A couple other comments related to sex that I just decided I wanted to point out:
“Not that there would be anything wrong: sex work is legitimate work, and people who engage in it are just as deserving of respect as ballerinas, or firefighters, or hedge fund managers.”
I don’t know if Hazelwood actually believes this idea, though I would venture to guess that she does, but this is a harmful view to hold and completely ignores the fact that most ‘sex work’ is not legitimate. It increases the demand and creation of porn which is also harmful to people. It increases the demand for women which inevitably leads to sex and child trafficking. It is not an ‘innocent line of work’ as some are trying to suggest.
The sexual ‘freedom’ the general population is dying for isn’t quite the utopia they think they’ll get.
If you don’t believe me, do your own research. It’s not hard to find the wreckage in the wake of sex work and porn. Yes, I have strong feelings about this.
I can agree that all people should be treated with respect and dignity, regardless of their ‘occupation.’ I am not condemning the people, but the industry.
[Some other related book suggestions: The Porn Problem, Taking Down Backpage]
If that paragraph made me some enemies, how about this one:
“Planned Parenthood’s good people.”
I wasn’t planning to write all of this in this review but here I am. I guess there’s worse things I could be doing with my time.
There is a center in my town called Agape. They help women who are pregnant or who recently had babies. They help them with medical and emotional care. But they do not provide abortions. These are the kinds of centers we need more of.
It’s an oxymoron to have Planned Parenthood and good people in the same sentence. Abortion is the killing of babies and that is not good.
I’m sure many of you have lots of arguments you’d like to share with me about Planned Parenthood. I would direct you HERE.
Okay, I’ll get off my soap box.
The bottom line is: There is some graphic sexual content in a few of the chapters that I wish wasn’t there.
Elsie’s People-Pleasing
A core part of this book is Elsie’s desire to please people. She learned early in life that if she could change into what people wanted, they liked her. She became good at recognizing what people wanted to hear, see, etc and adapted to fit their desire or expectation of who she should be.
“I don’t really have time for that. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Or makes you resent your pathological inability to set boundaries, one of the two.”
“I find that people like me better if they don’t have to expend emotional energy on me.”
This paired well with her fake-dating gig. She could be anyone!
This does not pair well with actual dating. Her roommate tells her:
“You’d rather walk into the sea with stones in your pockets than date— though that’s because of your basic misconception that human romantic relationships can only succeed if you hide and shape yourself into what you think others want you to be.”
Jack is different, though. He can see through her various personas. He recognizes when her personality changes. He calls her on it. And psycho-analyzes:
“That way if something goes wrong, if someone rejects you, then it’s not about you, is it? When you’re yourself, that’s when you’re exposed. Vulnerable. But if you hold back… Losing a game’s always painful, but knowing that you haven’t played your best hand makes it bearable.”
This is a somewhat common trope for romance novels/movies. A person who is afraid to be themselves because they don’t want to be rejected.
It wasn’t groundbreaking concepts, but I liked how Jack challenged her to speak her mind, to be honest, and say ‘no.’
She was not afraid to be confrontational with Jack when she was still in the hate-phase. I liked that side of her. I like when someone stands up for themselves. I get annoyed when people don’t say what they’re thinking especially in important situations. Go ahead. Give me an Enneagram number.
Obviously don’t be annoying and argumentative, but just strong-willed, secure, and confident to hold your own.
Randoms
Here are some things I thought were funny and I didn’t know where else to put them so this is the place.
“I sink into the heated seat he turned on for me and remember the time I swerved to avoid a squirrel, almost causing a multivehicle crash. The squirrel turned out to be a Wendy’s paper bag, but it’s fine. I’m good at other things. Probably.”
A character was wearing a “Breathe If You Hate Tom Brady shirt.” Haha. Classic. I’m totally going to use this concept on a shirt for my website’s store. So many possibilities.
A student comes up to her to “tell me about this super-cool movie he just watched and ask me if one could theoretically invert time (dang you, Christopher Nolan)” This is the movie Tenet. Which I have watched. And I would definitely be the student that would want to discuss the physics of it. Because it’s insane.
Recommendation
Okay, so after all that, what’s the deal?
If you have the self-control to skip over a few chapters, and don’t mind some swearing and sexual innuendo, I think you’ll enjoy this unique and humorous take on a rom-com.
If any of that doesn’t sit well with you, probably try something else. Possibly The Rom-Com Agenda.
And if Hazelwood comes out with some PG-13 material, SOMEONE PLEASE COME TELL ME!
Learning Corner
This book is about scientists, so of course they’re going to say words like ‘gravitational singularity,’ ‘sectoral heterochromic,’ ‘boson,’ and ‘biaxial nematics.’
We have permission to gloss over those. But there were also some other big words if you want to expand your vocabulary and sound like you have a PhD in something.
ignominy: public shame or disgrace (It would be an ignominy if you didn’t follow my reviews on Facebook.)
apotheosis: the highest point in the development of something; culmination or climax (The apotheosis of your day was to stumble across my book reviews.)
inchoately: confused or incoherently (When you don’t know what book to read next, you may walk around inchoately.)
convivial: friendly, lively, enjoyable (Browsing my book reviews is a convivial way to spend an afternoon!)
And I finally researched how to actually pronounce these two reads: “canapes” and “annals". So that was cool.
[Content Advisory: 88 f-words (that tend to show up in groupings of 3), 96 s-words, sexual inneundos throughout; a couple graphic sex scenes (as talked about above)]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This book releases June, 2023. You can pre-order a copy of this book via my affiliate link below.
Share this book review to your social media!