the love hypothesis (ali hazelwood): a review

 The Love Hypothesis (a review)


rating: ⭐⭐⭐

I read The Love Hypothesis because I saw Sam reading The Love Hypothesis. I did not love this book, although a lot of that is because I don't like certain tropes in romance novels. If you really enjoy cheesy romance books or like tropes I don't, you might well like it more than I did. 

If you have been living under a rock, you may not be familiar with the premise of The Love Hypothesis, in which case I'm here to tell you that this book is about a fake relationship between Olive, a science grad student (I don't know what kind of science, but she does cancer research, so whatever field of science that is) and Adam, a professor of... some kind of science. It's crazy how I've read this entire book and I still don't know what kind of science Olive and Adam do. Anyway, Olive and Adam start fake dating because Olive wants to convince her friend Anh that it is okay for Anh to date Olive's ex because Olive is romantically involved with Adam (except, remember, she isn't actually romantically involved with Adam because they're fake dating) and Adam wants to convince the university to extend his funding for his experiments by proving he is not planning on getting a job somewhere else (the idea being that if he's dating Olive, he isn't going to move). When I write it all out like that, it sounds both convoluted and like a run on sentence. Anyway, the fake dating turns into real dating, because it always does.

Although 100% of the romance novels I have reviewed on my blog have fake dating in them, I do not actually like the fake dating trope. I also do not like slow burn because I'm impatient. This book had both of those tropes. It also had the miscommunication trope, sort of, although the love interests don't break up for 50 pages, which is nice. The Love Hypothesis takes every trope I don't like and puts them all together. I still enjoyed it well enough, though.

Probably my main objective criticism of this book is that the author does not understand how to make the plot function in a normal and consistent manner. So little happened for the first 150 pages, and then everything started happening all at once. The major driver of the plot for those first 150 pages was Olive's friend Anh. She is the reason Olive and Adam fake-got together, and she keeps peer pressuring them into doing couple-y things. That is the only way the plot progresses. 

My other complaint is that I didn't really care for any of the characters. Olive is sort of dense and she lets people walk all over her. Adam is supposed to be super mean towards the beginning, but then he magically gets,,, less mean. I'm not sure how that happened. Anh is fine. Olive's friend Malcolm is actually quite sweet, and I liked him. Tom is a terrible person whom I would like to throw into a leech-infested lake, although you are supposed to hate him.

The ending was pretty good. The loose threads got tied up nicely. The conflicts were resolved. I don't think I can say anything more without spoiling stuff, and, to be honest, I've already forgotten a lot of the plot.

Easily the best thing The Love Hypothesis has going for it is it's sort of fun. I had a good time. I didn't read it expecting a literary masterpiece, so I'm only a little disappointed in its quality.

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