The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
This book is incredibly easy to digest and will induce the desired sugar high. I only felt slightly nauseous after gobbling it down.
About midway through The Body Keeps the Score, the open book in my bio, I needed a break from the psychology of traumatic memory (though that book is excellent and I plan to finish). I picked up The Love Hypothesis, about a PhD student at Stanford who starts a fake relationship with a smoking hot professor in a different department. Their reasons for pretending to date are vaguely plausible, and the predictable hijinks ensue.
The good: This book is as-advertised – cute, entertaining and silly, with the nutritional value of a bag of jelly beans (the delicious kind you can’t stop eating until they are all gone). The detailed spicy scenes weren’t entirely necessary to move the narrative forward, but no one is complaining.
The bad: the narrator is a grown woman getting a PhD from Stanford, but has the voice of an insecure teenager. I agree that women in general tend to be self-deprecating. It is important to explore that. But sometimes I find, in tradition of Bridget Jones’ Diary, that insecurity is celebrated as adorable and even portrayed as the narrator’s strength. As a woman who once believed the entire world thought it was endearing to be a hot mess, I am here to tell you, it is not true. It backfires. Celebrating and embracing hot-messness is not a winning strategy for female world domination. I appreciate books like this as funny and reassuring. But ladies, we have to find a way to like, and to be, confident female characters.
In terms of gender dynamics, this pushes few boundaries. Yes, the narrator is getting a PhD. But the male lead is older and more successful than her. He is in a position of authority over her and her friends (though the author is careful to point out that he is not supervising her directly, making this just short of a #metoo violation).
Overall, if you can measure the appropriate skepticism towards the contemporary culture the book reflects back at you, it is worthy of your next beach read.