Love, Theoretically

• Author: Ali Hazelwood
• Genre: Romance
• Publication Date: June 12, 2023 
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio

Thank you to libro.fm and Penguin Random House Audio for providing me with an ALC of this audiobook. I am offering my honest opinion voluntarily.

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?

I admit that I got caught up in the whole craze that swept the bookish community when Hazelwood’s first book debuted. But then I haven’t read another one since, mainly because the feedback I’ve heard mentioned that her stories are a bit formulaic. However, I was told by a good friend that I *had* to read this one, so I did, and she was right.

As a woman who majored in a STEM field before we even called it STEM, I find her stories set in academia to be intriguing. There’s definitely still misogyny and paternalism in the field according to these books, so that part hasn’t changed, unfortunately. But I think one of the most interesting parts of this story was the way that we get to learn more about higher-order physics and what physicists actually do. 

Elsie is the kind of person who is an extreme people pleaser, a chameleon who tailors herself depending on the person she is talking to. Despite being brilliant and talented and focused, she is stuck working as an adjunct professor which leaves her broke and without health insurance. While this isn’t a big deal for most healthy people, Elsie has a chronic condition—she has Type I Diabetes, and she requires insulin to live. She supplements her income by posing as a fake girlfriend.

A job interview at MIT puts her face to face with Jack, the annoying older brother of her favorite client, who thinks she’s a librarian. Not only is Jack on the hiring committee, he thinks she’s lying about everything to his younger brother. It doesn’t set these two up for a good start, but since academia tends to be a small world, Jack and Elsie are brought into each other’s orbits increasingly throughout the story. I loved watching these two connect and get to know each other. 

This is very much a he-falls-first story, and I was all about this part of it! There wasn’t any issue with miscommunication, which seems so common in romance lately. They talk and make sure to be honest with each other, which I love to see, and the connection between them felt real. 

As for disability representation, this was both hit and miss. I loved that Hazelwood included a character with a chronic illness, and addressed the tightrope that far too many people walk in America when they don’t have health insurance—the constant worry about how to afford medication, how to come up with enough money, whether skipping a dose here and there is manageable without harming your health, etc. These are all very real issues. But where Hazelwood fell short with the representation is her knowledge about diabetic management and issues, which is clearly lacking for some reason. Rather than discussing all of this here, I’ll leave that in the capable hands of Elizabeth—you can find her review here. 

Overall, I found this to be my favorite of the Hazelwood books. I liked Elsie and Jack’s characters, both individually and together, a lot better, and enjoyed seeing their relationship grow and blossom. The audiobook narration was fantastic, fun, and quirky, and conveyed Elsie’s personality perfectly. I may just take a peek back into Hazelwood’s backlist, now that I’m aware of the formulaic romance arc, but I’m actually super curious about her upcoming YA debut!