Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

STEMinist fake-dating enemies-to-lovers romcom set in Boston academia. Theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway moonlights as a professional fake girlfriend to pay rent, until the annoyingly attractive brother of her favorite client turns out to be the experimental physicist who torpedoed her entire field—and also controls her shot at her dream job at MIT.

I came into this one with a grudge. I’d binged several Hazelwood books in a row recently and the last one left me genuinely annoyed over a single scene that did not land right for me. I was ready to be difficult about this book. I was not difficult about this book.

I read it in one sitting, start to finish, today. I teared up in the middle. The snarky grandmother is perfect. The cheese-loving, best friend with an auteur-fetish is exactly the right amount of chaotic support character. Elsie herself got me. The people-pleasing, the shape-shifting for everyone else’s comfort, the exhaustion of performing a different version of yourself depending on who’s in the room. That part hit somewhere specific.

Here’s my one complaint, and I’m going to own that it’s not really a complaint about the book Hazelwood wrote, it’s a complaint about the book I wanted her to write: I needed a proposal. I needed Elsie to take Jack to the Public Garden, to the Make Way for Ducklings statues, and get down on one knee right there in front of Mrs. Mallard. I had the whole scene in my head. Hazelwood did not deliver it. What she delivered instead was true to who Elsie is and what she actually needs—less Cinderella, more real. I respect it. I still wanted the ducks.

Will I read the next one? Already looking for it in my Libby app.