Started: June 25th
Finished: June 29th
TSM Rating: 5/5
I feel smarter when I read Ali Hazelwood’s books. And also dumber.😂 Hazelwood has he PhD in neuroscience so naturally all her characters are women and men of STEM. She infuses science into her books and when her protagonists get together they nerd out on all their combined science knowledge. Makes me which my brain understood it all better because I actually do love science.
In Love, Theoretically, we meet Elsie who uses her natural instinct to make herself anything anyone wants her to be to make extra cash as a fake girlfriend, while working at several different universities around Boston as an adjunct professor. When our story starts she is attending the family party of her fake boyfriend, Greg. Now, this isn’t your typical fake dating scenario where the two people involved are secretly hot for each other. Nope. In this case, the object of Elsie curiosity is Greg’s brother, Jack.
When her fake dating world and her very real academic profession collide during the biggest interview of her career, Elsie has do everything she can to keep it from falling apart. On the evening of her meet and greet dinner with several members of the MIT hiring committee, Elsie runs into Jack, who also happens to be, she finds out, he academic nemesis. She stuck between a rock and a hard place because the Elsie he knows is very different from who she actually is, and she can’t tell him the whole truth without betraying Greg’s confidence.
I know it sounds crazy and a bit complicated. That’s because it is and all the best romance novels kind of are. As the two spend more time together, however, the more Elsie realizes that she doesn’t have to be something specific for Jack. She can just be her without fear of judgement, although its a very hard thing for her to believe. It’s the beautiful thing about their relationship.
It’s like he’s trying to puzzle me out without changing me — and that’s impossible. That’s not how people are, not with me.
Elsie, page 13
“…Except I don’t care much about other people, but I can’t stop paying attention to you.” He shrugs. There is something so utterly, disarmingly honest about him. “So I look.”
Jack & Elsie, page 245
While Hazelwood’s books have very explicit sex scenes — I recently learned the phrase open door vs. closed door and she is VERY open door — all of her characters tend to skew more towards the asexual end of the spectrum until they meet that one person who awakens their desires.
While Jack and Elsie start spending time together fairy early in the boo,, it takes them awhile to build the trust needed to get to that point. The way Hazelwood allows their relationship to unfold and progress with stops and starts adds an element of realism to their story that doesn’t exist in most romances. The stops happen because they are getting to know each other, because they are struggling to take it slow and fighting their basest instincts.
“…And I need you to keep us in check. I need you to pace us, because wherever it is we’re going…I’m here. I’m already right here.”
Jack, page 377
Ah! She’s so good. Her male protagonists are so deeply emotionally behind the hyper intelligence and masculinity. If only all men had that level of emotional intelligence…
Read it. And read everything Ali Hazelwood writes. Because, like Tessa Bailey, her writing is perfection.
The Saucy Mama 