The Love Hypothesis

Author: Ali Hazelwood

Rating: ⭐ 3/5

Date Read: 2025/01/16

Pages: 383

Never in the history of actual humans have two people who are attracted to each other pretended to date for rEaSoNs, then experienced conflict around said attraction.

This is not something that happens in real life. It only happens in movies and romance novels.

I have no idea why I continue to read books with this fake dating trope, because it genuinely annoys me that we pretend that it happens. It annoyed me in Happy Place, it annoyed me in The Paradise Problem, and it continues to annoy me in The Love Hypothesis.

As a recovering academic, I’m also aware that the bizarro depiction of academia in The Love Hypothesis is far from reality. It’s closer to reality than fake dating, though. Academic departments are toxic places with no HR departments, rife with underpaid, overworked intellectuals with substance abuse issues. Questionable decisions abound.

Olive, the female main character of The Love Hypothesis, pays lip service to the fact that fake dating is something silly that happens in rom-coms. I do appreciate that Ali Hazelwood winks at the reader with self-aware, meta commentary. I get the sense that she, like me, also watched the classic trope progenitor, Drive Me Crazy (staring Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier), and remains deeply nostalgic for simpler times circa 1999. Plus, as an OG Britney Spears fan, I believe we should all admit that the Drive Me Crazy music video with the chair dance was 10/10, no notes.

Apparently, the male main character was modeled after Kylo Ren, played by Adam Driver. I maintain that he is incredibly attractive, even though my husband cannot understand this obsession and looks at my easel askance whenever I draw him shirtless.

Anyway, if you’re willing to spend your disbelief about realistic human behavior for approximately 400 pages while picturing shirtless Adam Driver, this is certainly one of the ways to do it.