Book 44/30.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Last year I read Ali Hazelwood’s debut novel, The Love Hypothesis, for book 44/30 because book 44 is ALWAYS a romance one, IYKYK 😌 It was my final book of the year (and a MAJOR 5 star read 🤩), and here I am this year reading her second novel for book 44 (insert dramatic pause) with 3 months left in the year and I LOVE THAT FOR ME 💅🤓
Love on the Brain is a STEMinist rom-com in which a scientist is forced to work on a project with her nemesis-with explosive results. Like an avenging, purple-haired Jedi bringing balance to the mansplained universe, Bee Königswasser lives by a simple code: What would Marie Curie do? If NASA offered her the lead on a neuroengineering project-a literal dream come true after years scraping by on the crumbs of academia-Marie would accept without hesitation. Duh. But the mother of modern physics never had to co-lead with Levi Ward. Sure, Levi is attractive in a tall, dark, and piercing-eyes kind of way. And sure, he caught her in his powerfully corded arms like a romance novel hero when she accidentally damseled in distress on her first day in the lab. But Levi made his feelings toward Bee very clear in grad school-archenemies work best employed in their own galaxies far, far away. Now, her equipment is missing, the staff is ignoring her, and Bee finds her floundering career in somewhat of a pickle. Perhaps it’s her occipital cortex playing tricks on her, but Bee could swear she can see Levi softening into an ally, backing her plays, seconding her ideas…devouring her with those eyes. And the possibilities have all her neurons firing. But when it comes time to actually make a move and put her heart on the line, there’s only one question that matters: What will Bee Königswasser do?
I read The Love Hypothesis (TLH) in (more or less) one sitting because it was just! sooo!! GOOD!!! I took three days to read LotB, and rated it 4 stars, so that should tell you I quite enjoyed it, but it was a bit too familiar to TLH for my liking. For one thing, Bee is Olive with piercings and tattoos and Levi is Adam with green eyes. The bad guy gave me major TLH vibes, same to the academic conference they attended in New Orleans. I have seen a couple of Goodreads reviews that echo my sentiments, and not just for this book but for her three novellas as well. Safe to say I will not read the novellas even though I previously had my eye on them, because there are only so many times (two) you can read different versions of the same book. I sincerely hope that with her next book Ms. Hazelwood breaks the mould and writes something that is not TLH 3.0, otherwise I will not be reading it 😐 I was also not a fan of how long it took Bee to see that Levi was into her. It gave me major The Hating Game vibes as that is the same issue I had with that book. I understood her reasons as the author did a good job with Bee’s background, but still.
Majority of my review probably has you wondering why I rated LotB 4 stars 😅 but in and of itself I quite enjoyed it, so the 4 stars are well deserved. And the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that if I read this before TLH I would probably have rated it 5 stars 😅
View all my reviews
** A guide to ratings **
1 star – did not like it
2 stars – it was okay
3 stars – liked it
4 stars – really liked it
5 stars – it was amazing
Lwile the Leo 