The Love Hypothesis

As a third-year PhD candidate in biology at Stanford, Olive Smith is sure of two things: experimental data, and the idea that romantic love is a fiction people tell themselves. So when she needs to convince her best friend that her own love life is thriving, she panics and kisses the first man she sees — who happens to be Adam Carlsen, a young, brilliant, notoriously unapproachable professor.

To Olive's surprise, Adam agrees to keep up the fake-dating charade; he has reasons of his own for wanting the department to believe he's settling down. What begins as a tidy arrangement grows complicated as conference travel, lab politics, and Adam's unexpected steadiness start to blur the line between performance and feeling.

Ali Hazelwood's debut is a warm, funny STEM rom-com about a heroine who trusts her hypotheses more than her heart, and the grumpy academic who makes her want to revise them.