Review: Love, Theoretically

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Elsie is a theoretical physicist, one year post-grad she is barely scraping by as an adjunct professor teaching multiple classes in three separate colleges. Even then to afford the rent on her crummy apartment she has to work as a fake date for sad losers. Elsie is particularly good at being a fake girlfriend because she has spent her entire life being what other people want her to be, agreeing with their opinions, hiding her own views for fear of being rejected. The only one of Elsie's clients that she actually likes is Greg Smith, although his older brother Jack seems to heartily dislike her. Elsie has broken her one date rule for Greg because the rest of his family is so obnoxious, and she told them she was a librarian.

She blames this sorry state of affairs on Jonathon Smith-Turner, an Experimentalist physicist who wrote a pseudo-paper on theoretical physics which was published in the Annals of Theoretical Physics journal which made theoretical physicists, and Elsie's mentor Dr Laurendeau especially, a laughing stock.

When a tenure position comes up at MIT Elsie is beyond excited, a chance for a job with a decent salary, no teaching, and best of all full health insurance to cover her Type 1 diabetes insulin. But it seems like the physics department at MIT is equally divided between theoretical and experimental physicists. But when Elsie meets the physics department for dinner as part of her interview process she makes a terrible discovery. Jonathon Smith-Turner is no other than Jack Smith, Greg's older brother. Even worse? He sees straight through Elsie's people-pleasing ways, and he thinks she's some kind of scam artist. Elsie hates Jack so much for what he did to her beloved theoretical physics that she feels no desire to hide her true self from him, with him she lets rip and she's not giving up this job without a fight.

I'm afraid this has all the Ali Hazlewood clichés, Elsie's a tiny girl, Jack is huge (she thinks he's some kind of lumberjack when she first sees him, but then thinks he's a PE teacher), Elsie likes to reference nerdy science stuff, she can't believe that Jack likes her, even when he explicitly states it, etc. But I don't care. This really worked for me, I loved the snark and the weird flatmate, the nerdy science talk and Jack was such a sweetie. I'm so glad I requested this book.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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