Ali Hazelwood - Love, Theoretically

So once in a while I do need to recover from Serious Books by reading romances. So when I spotted Ali Hazelwood's new book at the library I - after looking right and left furtively - borrowed it and shoved it at the bottom of my bag.

For the unapprised reader: Ali Hazelwood writes what you might call STEM romances. Her first book The Love Hypothesis is a Kylo Ren/Rey AU set in academia - Olive is a broke grad student, Adam Carlsen is some haughty hotshot science professor, they pretend to date, hilarity ensues. Her second book Love on the Brain is - I presume - the same thing but in a NASA/neuroscience setting (cross-discipline!). And now we have Love, Theoretically, which is set in the world of theoretical/experimental physics.

The academic STEM setting is, like, 95% of the point of reading these books. In an alternate universe I am a grad student, so these books are my chance to occupy that world for a while. My favourite bits of Love, Theoretically are the theoretical vs. experimental physics divide, the trolling of academic journals, and the adjunctification of work in universities. Sorry, not very romance-y at all.

Anyway, Hazelwood's characters are a bit copy-and-paste. The female protagonist is always some clumsy-ass, self-doubting girl who's obviously smart and loves her work but keeps cockblocking herself with imposter syndrome. All right, I'm all for fallible characters, but there is a limit to how much negative self-talk you can throw at me before the character becomes downright unappealing.

Then there's always this sexy academic white guy the size of a jumbo fridge who inexplicably falls for the main character despite her constantly insulting herself. The plot consists of her accusing him of hating her, him saying no actually he rather likes her, which she wilfully ignores, and then they have sex at the 80% point of the book.

In Love, Theoretically there is fortunately a major plot arc involving the main character's inability to stick up for herself. Elsie's (one) friend tries to get her to change her ways, but of course she doesn't until she gets into this relationship with the Refrigerator, who makes her realise her behaviour is getting in her way of happiness. Etc. So she finally grows a pair. At least there's that! Because I don't really care about Mr Large Kitchen Appliance. 

Other than that, the subplots on academic rivalries, living with type 1 diabetes, condescending white men in ivory towers, the bullshit around publishing, the dreadful slog of teaching entitled college students, etc. - were what pushed the story along. That, and my favourite characters - Elsie's roommate Cece and her pet hedgehog. I would happily read a book about Cece and Hedgie snacking on cheese while watching arthouse films.