• Book Review,  Books

    Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood | Book Review

    Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
    Release Date: 13th June 2023
    Genre: Adult, Romance
    Source: Publisher, NetGalley
    Rating: ★★★.5

    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?

    You know what, I was really struggling with this book in the beginning and I was even contemplating putting it down for a bit and possibly not returning. Fortunately, I persevered, and I ended up really enjoying Love, Theoretically! It’s definitely not Hazelwood’s strongest book. I think a lot of readers will struggle at the start because the romance takes so long to get going. But if you are already a fan of her works, like I am, and have faith that it will get better then I would recommend continuing on through the somewhat difficult first few chapters.

    It took about 100 pages for me to really get into this book and start liking the romance. While we’re introduced to the main character and her love interest and their dynamic quite early, it took a long time for me to connect with and understand their energy. But I loved it once I got used to it!

    Of course, there are the usual tropes of the guy being Just So Big and the female main character being super tiny. I was expecting this from Hazelwood at this point, and I had a good laugh with my spouse about the “oh I’m so tiny” comments because we may or may not know some real people who come out with that in real life.

    Also, I’m pleased to say that I think Hazelwood has improved in the sex scene department! After THAT scene in The Love Hypothesis, I kind of lost hope, and I can’t remember really being into the love scenes in her sophomore book. Thankfully, I ended up quite enjoying the scene in this one. It’s still slightly cringey and not really my thing, but it wasn’t as bad as the scene in her first book.

    All that to say, I really enjoyed this because it was a fun, light read while also tackling slightly deeper topics, but not so much that it’s going to ruin your evening.

  • Book Review

    Dream On by Angie Hockman | Book Review

    Dream On by Angie Hockman
    Release Date: 5th July 2022
    Publisher: Headline
    Genre: Adult, Contemporary Romance
    Source: Publisher
    Rating: ★★★★
    Goodreads

    When law student Cass Walker wakes up after surviving a car accident, she is flooded with memories of her boyfriend, Devin. The only problem? Devin doesn’t exist. But everything she remembers about him feels so real, like the precise shade of his coffee-brown eyes; the texture of his favorite hand-me-down scarf; even the slightly crooked angle of his pinkie, broken after falling off a trampoline in third grade. She knows he’s a figment of her imagination—friends, family, and doctors confirm it—but she still can’t seem to get him out of her head.

    So when she runs into the real Devin a year later in a Cleveland flower shop, she’s completely shocked. Even more surprising is that Devin actually believes her story, and soon they embark on a real-life romance. With her dream man by her side and an upcoming summer job at a prestigious law firm, Cass’s future seems perfect. But fate might have other plans…

    Angie Hockman brought a brand new twist to my one of my favourite tropes – memory loss stories! I
    always find that this trope has the potential to bring about a lot of mystery and intrigue, and Dream On
    had this in spades.

    Of course, ultimately, Dream On is a romance book. However to me it felt more of a contemporary story
    about a woman who was finding herself, with a sprinkling of love thrown in. Plus, it was all very
    mysterious as I was trying to figure out how the heck Cass knew Devin when she had never met him
    before. Why was she dreaming about him?! I had a lot of theories, and only one of them turned out to be
    somewhat accurate.

    I loved following Cass. She starts off a little broken, and is trying to fit back into her summer programme
    with a top law firm. Her dream is to be a lawyer but it might be because she thinks that’s what her mother
    wants for her. Then she meets two florists, and it all spirals out of control from there. Seeing Cass go
    through so much and a lot of character growth was excellent.

    There is a little bit of a love triangle, although it’s not all that intense. I didn’t love either romance in this
    book (I think Hockman wrote a much better ship in Shipped) but I didn’t hate the romance either. It was
    kind of just there, while the main story that I got invested in was Cass and whatever she was going to
    decide to do.

    I didn’t love Dream On as much as I loved Shipped, but this was a good follow up book that kept me
    engaged and helped me during my reading slump. Which I’m still in, by the way, but I’m working on it.