Love, Theoretically

The best parts of having a crush are the giddiness, the hyperactive joy, and the wondering of what will come next. Which is to say, if it’s possible to have a crush on a book, I have a massive one on Love, Theoretically. The latest from romance mastermind Ali Hazelwood delivers on all the sappy, giggly, and blush-worthy fun of falling in love, full of clever and science-filled twists.

Elsie Hannaway, a theoretical physicist and a fake-girlfriend-for-hire, should be good at handling abstract concepts like romantic feelings. But as she finds herself battling it out with stoic experimentalist Jack Smith for her dream job, it turns out she has a lot to learn. She’s not just figuring out how to stand up for herself in a toxic workplace, and be vulnerable with people in her life, but also maybe how to turn all those longing looks and flirty insults in the halls of MIT into something more.

Elsie and Jack are incredibly easy characters to love, even if they have to figure that out for themselves over the course of this story. But I can’t wait to see readers fall for them as deeply, and happily, as I did. If you enjoy screaming for characters to “just kiss already,” an intellectual battle of wits with hidden flirty subtext, or a heroine learning how to be her true self, this is the romance for you.

The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.

Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, right between Elsie and her dream job.

Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but . . . those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?