Olive Smith loves rom-coms: funny, cute meets, impractical circumstances, unlikely love- it’s great. But not when she’s living one! You see, her best friend, Anh, is really into a guy that Olive dated like once and didn’t even like that much. But Anh won’t date him because of “girl-code”. Olive decides that the best way to help her friend is to pretend that she’s already in a new relationship. But one lie always leads to another, and pretty soon the truth is even worse because she finds herself falling for her fake boyfriend, and there’s no way he could like her back because he’s amazing and she’s just Olive. Come along for a self-aware rom-com experiment in The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood.
[Warning: My review of The Love Hypothesis contains some spoilers!]
This can’t be happening; Olive hates her life
Well, she doesn’t hate her whole life, but Olive is under a little bit of stress. You see, her best friend in the whole world is really into a guy that Olive went out with a handful of times and wasn’t that into. Olive would be thrilled to see her girl Anh happy with him, but Anh won’t even consider it because of “girl-code”. So Olive, being a brilliant scientist, comes up with a brilliant plan: She tells Anh that she already has a new guy and is headed out on a date with him. Then Olive heads off to the lab for her “date”. It’s perfect! Until Anh heads into the lab as well. Olive panics and kisses a random guy walking down the hall so that Anh will think that it’s her date.
When the kiss ends she realizes that she didn’t kiss just some random grad student (like herself), she’s just kissed the most notorious professor at Stanford, Dr. Adam Carlsen. He’s known to be a total jerk, and he proves it when he tells her he’s going to file a Title IX complaint against her if she doesn’t explain herself, and Olive isn’t sure if he’s kidding or not. Worse, the gossip soon spreads until the whole department knows about the kiss and assumes the two are dating. It’s a total mess. But Olive has an even crazier idea. To make sure Anh buys into the whole Olive-dating thing, they should fake-date! When she presents her idea to Dr. Carlsen, she’s sure he’ll turn her down. Instead, he admits that it could help him as well and agrees. Olive lays down some ground rules for them: it’s a strictly on-campus relationship; no sex; no (real) dating other people; a set end date for the relationship; and, finally, a set “date” time in a highly conspicuous place. Dr. Carlsen agrees to her rules, as long as she starts calling him “Adam” instead of “Dr. Carlsen”, and their fake-relationship begins.
Turns out the two of them make a great fake couple. Olive’s friends are so convinced that Anh keeps pushing Olive into awkward PDA situations. Olive isn’t sure whether she wants to kill Anh, herself, or both of them, just to end the pain of these encounters. But she’s glad that Anh is buying her lie because she really does seem happy with Jeremy (the other guy). The more time Olive spends around Adam, the more she comes to see a different side of him. As the brooding, moody professor, he’s downright scary. But as the caring boyfriend, he’s sweet and funny. Olive finds herself enjoying their fake dates. Then one day she realizes that she’s broken rom-com rule 1: she’s fallen for the guy she’s fake dating. Worse, she hears that there’s some “amazing woman” that he’s been pining for for years, so she can’t even tell him how she feels. First, she hated her life because she had to fake-date Adam; now she hates her life because she can only fake-date Adam. Poor Olive. Too bad she’s forgetting the number one rule of science: wait until you have all the data before drawing conclusions…
Self-awareness takes The Love Hypothesis from a cringy rom-com to a hilarious comedy
Can we all agree that rom-coms are played out? The 90s made every rom-com possible, and there’s just no need to follow that trope anymore. Except that Hazelwood found a way to make it fresh and funny: self-awareness. Olive loves rom-coms, and she constantly makes references to “the rules” and the fact that they aren’t in a Hallmark movie. Poking fun at the very genre she’s writing makes Hazelwood’s writing funny instead of obnoxious. I usually don’t care much for rom-coms (in case you couldn’t tell), but I thoroughly enjoyed The Love Hypothesis. Olive is such a sweet and naive girl, even if she is a beautiful scientist. Her discomfort at putting sunscreen on her fake boyfriend to please her best friend’s romantic cliché fantasy is hysterical, a standout scene for sure.
I think Olive’s constant saying that “this isn’t a Hallmark movie” about the situation made everything even funnier. Partly because we know it’s a rom-com, so of course we know that it’s going to play out like a Hallmark movie, and partly because we can all relate to that feeling. We all have moments in our life that when we look back at them we’re like “it was just like a movie”. I know my marriage certainly started like a stupid rom-com (girl gets mad at guy, girl takes it out on other guy she doesn’t have any interest in, other guy offers to make it up by taking her out and she gets stuck going on a date with him, they hit it off and never look back). So I related to Olive thinking things can’t or won’t happen because they only happen in movies, only to have it actually happen to her. No one has the same story as Olive and Adam, but we can relate to the dissociative feeling of “this feels like a movie,” which makes their situation that much funnier. Grab The Love Hypothesis today and laugh your butt off at some good old-fashioned rom-com goofiness.
Rating: 9/10
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood is available now!
Learn more about the book at the official website for the title.
You might also like…
