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Chapter One
Hypothesis: When given a choice between A (a slightly inconveniencing situation) and B (a colossal shitshow with devastating consequences), I will inevitably end up selecting B.
In Olive's defense, the man didn't seem to mind the kiss too much.
It did take him a moment to adjust-perfectly understandable, given the sudden circumstances. It was an awkward, uncomfortable, somewhat painful minute, in which Olive was simultaneously smashing her lips against his and pushing herself as high as her toes would extend to keep her mouth at the same level as his face. Did he have to be so tall? The kiss must have looked like some clumsy headbutt, and she grew anxious that she was not going to be able to pull the whole thing off. Her friend Anh, whom Olive had spotted coming her way a few seconds ago, was going to take one look at this and know at once that Olive and Kiss Dude couldn't possibly be two people in the middle of a date.
Then that agonizingly slow moment went by, and the kiss became . . . different. The man inhaled sharply and inclined his head a tiny bit, making Olive feel less like a squirrel monkey climbing a baobab tree, and his hands-which were large and pleasantly warm in the AC of the hallway-closed around her waist. They slid up a few inches, coming to wrap around Olive's rib cage and holding her to himself. Not too close, and not too far.
It was more of a prolonged peck than anything, but it was quite nice, and for the life span of a few seconds Olive forgot a large number of things, including the fact that she was pressed against a random, unknown dude. That she'd barely had the time to whisper "Can I please kiss you?" before locking lips with him. That what had originally driven her to put on this entire show was the hope of fooling Anh, her best friend in the whole world.
But a good kiss will do that: make a girl forget herself for a while. Olive found herself melting into a broad, solid chest that showed absolutely no give. Her hands traveled from a defined jaw into surprisingly thick and soft hair, and then-then she heard herself sigh, as if already out of breath, and that's when it hit her like a brick on the head, the realization that- No. No.
Nope, nope, no.
She should not be enjoying this. Random dude, and all that.
Olive gasped and pushed herself away from him, frantically looking for Anh. In the 11:00 p.m. bluish glow of the biology labs' hallway, her friend was nowhere to be seen. Weird. Olive was sure she had spotted her a few seconds earlier.
Kiss Dude, on the other hand, was standing right in front of her, lips parted, chest rising and a weird light flickering in his eyes, which was exactly when it dawned on her, the enormity of what she had just done. Of who she had just-
Fuck her life.
Fuck. Her. Life.
Because Dr. Adam Carlsen was a known ass.
This fact was not remarkable in and of itself, as in academia every position above the graduate student level (Olive's level, sadly) required some degree of assness in order to be held for any length of time, with tenured faculty at the very peak of the ass pyramid. Dr. Carlsen, though-he was exceptional. At least if the rumors were anything to go by.
He was the reason Olive's roommate, Malcolm, had to completely scrap two research projects and would likely end up graduating a year late; the one who had made Jeremy throw up from anxiety before his qualifying exams; the sole culprit for half the students in the department being forced to postpone their thesis defenses. Joe, who used to be in Olive's cohort and would take her to watch out-of-focus European movies with microscopic subtitles every Thursday night, had been a research assistant in Carlsen's lab, but he'd decided to drop out six months into it for "reasons." It was probably for the best, since most of Carlsen's remaining graduate assistants had perennially shaky hands and often looked like they hadn't slept in a year.
Dr. Carlsen might have been a young academic rock star and biology's wunderkind, but he was also mean and hypercritical, and it was obvious in the way he spoke, in the way he carried himself, that he thought himself the only person doing decent science within the Stanford biology department. Within the entire world, probably. He was a notoriously moody, obnoxious, terrifying dick.
And Olive had just kissed him.
She wasn't sure how long the silence lasted-only that he was the one to break it. He stood in front of Olive, ridiculously intimidating with dark eyes and even darker hair, staring down from who knows how many inches above six feet-he must have been over half a foot taller than she was. He scowled, an expression that she recognized from seeing him attend the departmental seminar, a look that usually preceded him raising his hand to point out some perceived fatal flaw in the speaker's work.
Adam Carlsen. Destroyer of research careers , Olive had once overheard her adviser say.
It's okay. It's fine. Totally fine. She was just going to pretend nothing had happened, nod at him politely, and tiptoe her way out of here. Yes, solid plan.
"Did you . . . Did you just kiss me?" He sounded puzzled, and maybe a little out of breath. His lips were full and plump and . . . God. Kissed. There was simply no way Olive could get away with denying what she had just done.
Still, it was worth a try.
Surprisingly, it seemed to work.
"Ah. Okay, then." Carlsen nodded and turned around, looking vaguely disoriented. He took a couple of steps down the hallway, reached the water fountain-maybe where he'd been headed in the first place.
Olive was starting to believe that she might actually be off the hook when he halted and turned back with a skeptical expression.
"Are you sure?"
"I-" She buried her face in her hands. "It's not the way it looks."
"Okay. I . . . Okay," he repeated slowly. His voice was deep and low and sounded a lot like he was on his way to get ting mad. Like maybe he was already mad. "What's going on here?"
There was simply no way to explain this. Any normal person would have found Olive's situation odd, but Adam Carlsen, who obviously considered empathy a bug and not a feature of humanity, could never understand. She let her hands fall to her sides and took a deep breath.
"I . . . listen, I don't mean to be rude, but this is really none of your business."
He stared at her for a moment, and then he nodded. "Yes. Of course." He must be getting back into his usual groove, because his tone had lost some of its surprise and was back to normal-dry. Laconic. "I'll just go back to my office and begin to work on my Title IX complaint."
Olive exhaled in relief. "Yeah. That would be great, since- Wait. Your what?"
He cocked his head. "Title IX is a federal law that protects against sexual misconduct within academic settings-"
"I know what Title IX is."
"I see. So you willfully chose to disregard it."
"I- What? No. No, I didn't!"
He shrugged. "I must be mistaken, then. Someone else must have assaulted me."
"Assault-I didn't 'assault' you."
"You did kiss me."
"But not really ."
"Without first securing my consent."
"I asked if I could kiss you!"
"And then did so without waiting for my response."
"What? You said yes."
"Excuse me?"
She frowned. "I asked if I could kiss you, and you said yes."
"Incorrect. You asked if you could kiss me and I snorted."
"I'm pretty sure I heard you said yes."
He lifted one eyebrow, and for a minute Olive let herself daydream of drowning someone. Dr. Carlsen. Herself. Both sounded like great options.
"Listen, I'm really sorry. It was a weird situation. Can we just forget that this happened?"
He studied her for a long moment, his angular face serious and something else, something that she couldn't quite decipher because she was too busy noticing all over again how damn towering and broad he was. Just massive. Olive had always been slight, just this side of too slender, but girls who are five eight rarely felt diminutive. At least until they found themselves standing next to Adam Carlsen. She'd known that he was tall, of course, from seeing him around the department or walking across campus, from sharing the elevator with him, but they'd never interacted. Never been this close.
Except for a second ago, Olive. When you almost put your tongue in his-
"Is something wrong?" He sounded almost concerned.
"What? No. No, there isn't."
"Because," he continued calmly, "kissing a stranger at midnight in a science lab might be a sign that there is."
"There isn't."
Carlsen nodded, thoughtful. "Very well. Expect mail in the next few days, then." He began to walk past her, and she turned to yell after him.
"You didn't even ask my name!"
"I'm sure anyone could figure it out, since you must have swiped your badge to get in the labs area after hours. Have a good night."
"Wait!" She leaned forward and stopped him with a hand on his wrist. He paused immediately, even though it was obvious that it would take him no effort to free himself, and stared pointedly at the spot where her fingers had wrapped around his skin-right below a wristwatch that probably cost half her yearly graduate salary. Or all of it.
She let go of him at once and took one step back. "Sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"The kiss. Explain."
Olive bit into her lower lip. She had truly screwed herself over. She had to tell him, now. "Anh Pham." She looked around to make sure Anh was really gone. "The girl who was passing by. She's a graduate student in the biology department."
Carlsen gave no indication of knowing who Anh was.
"Anh has . . ." Olive pushed a strand of brown hair behind her ear. This was where the story became embarrassing. Complicated, and a little juvenile sounding. "I was seeing this guy in the department. Jeremy Langley, he has red hair and works with Dr. . . . Anyway, we went out just a couple of times, and then I brought him to Anh's birthday party, and they just sort of hit it off and-"
Olive shut her eyes. Which was probably a bad idea, because now she could see it painted on her lids, how her best friend and her date had bantered in that bowling alley, as if they'd known each other their whole lives; the never-exhausted topics of conversation, the laughter, and then, at the end of the night, Jeremy following Anh's every move with his gaze. It had been painfully clear who he was interested in. Olive waved a hand and tried for a smile.
"Long story short, after Jeremy and I ended things he asked Anh out. She said no because of . . . girl code and all that, but I can tell that she really likes him. She's afraid to hurt my feelings, and no matter how many times I told her it was fine she wouldn't believe me."
Not to mention that the other day I overheard her confess to our friend Malcolm that she thought Jeremy was awesome, but she could never betray me by going out with him, and she sounded so dejected. Disappointed and insecure, not at all like the spunky, larger-than-life Anh I am used to.
"So I just lied and told her that I was already dating someone else. Because she's one of my closest friends and I'd never seen her like a guy this much and I want her to have the good things she deserves and I'm positive that she would do the same for me and-" Olive realized that she was rambling and that Carlsen couldn't have cared less. She stopped and swallowed, even though her mouth felt dry. "Tonight. I told her I'd be on a date tonight ."
"Ah." His expression was unreadable.
"But I'm not. So I decided to come in to work on an experiment, but Anh showed up, too. She wasn't supposed to be here. But she was. Coming this way. And I panicked-well." Olive wiped a hand down her face. "I didn't really think."
Carlsen didn't say anything, but it was there in his eyes that he was thinking. Obviously.
"I just needed her to believe that I was on a date."
He nodded. "So you kissed the first person you saw in the hallway. Perfectly logical."
Olive winced. "When you put it like that, perhaps it wasn't my best moment."
"But it wasn't my worst, either! I'm pretty sure Anh saw us. Now she'll think that I was on a date with you and she'll hopefully feel free to go out with Jeremy and-" She shook her head. "Listen. I'm so, so sorry about the kiss."
"Please, don't report me. I really thought I heard you say yes. I promise I didn't mean to . . ."
Suddenly, the enormity of what she had just done fully dawned on her. She had just kissed a random guy, a guy who happened to be the most notoriously unpleasant faculty member in the biology department. She'd misunderstood a snort for consent, she'd basically attacked him in the hallway, and now he was staring at her in that odd, pensive way, so large and focused and close to her, and . . .
Maybe it was the late night. Maybe it was that her last coffee had been sixteen hours ago. Maybe it was Adam Carlsen looking down at her, like that. All of a sudden, this entire situation was just too much.
"Actually, you're absolutely right. And I am so sorry. If you felt in any way harassed by me, you really should report me, because it's only fair. It was a horrible thing to do, though I really didn't want to . . . Not that my intentions matter; it's more like your perception of . . ."
Crap, crap, crap.
"I'm going to leave now, okay? Thank you, and . . . I am so, so, so sorry." Olive spun around on her heels and ran away down the hallway.
"Olive," she heard him call after her. "Olive, wait-"
She didn't stop. She sprinted down the stairs to the first floor and then out the building and across the pathways of the sparsely lit Stanford campus, running past a girl walking her dog and a group of students laughing in front of the library. She continued until she was standing in front of her apartment's door, stopping only to unlock it, making a beeline for her room in the hope of avoiding her roommate and whoever he might have brought home tonight. It wasn’t until she slumped on her bed, staring at the glow‑in‑the- dark stars glued to her ceiling, that she realized that she had neglected to check on her lab mice. She had also left her laptop on her bench and her sweatshirt somewhere in the lab, and she had completely forgotten to stop at the store and buy the coffee she’d promised Malcolm she’d get for tomorrow morning. Shit. What a disaster of a day. It never occurred to Olive that Dr. Adam Carlsen— known ass— had called her by her name.
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Ali hazelwood.
Ali Hazelwood is a multi-published author—alas, of peer-reviewed articles about brain science, in which no one makes out and the ever after is not always happy. Originally from Italy, she lived in Germany and Japan before moving to the U.S. to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience. She recently became a professor, which absolutely terrifies her. When Ali is not at work, she can be found running, crocheting, eating cake pops, or watching sci-fi movies with her two feline overlords (and her slightly-less-feline husband).
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Customers find the characters loveable, witty, and charming. They also describe the book as young, fresh, and worth the money. Readers appreciate the content as wholesome, risk-adverse, and risk-taking. They describe the emotional tone as happy, brooding, and tender. They appreciate the writing style as flawless, strong, and continuous focus on consent, communication, and support. Customers describe the plot as cute, realistic, and moving. They mention the chemistry and nerdy references to science and research are electric. However, some customers find the sexual content cheesy and gross.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book funny, charming, and heartwarming. They also say it's highly addicting, with some grumpy and sunshine vibes. Readers also mention the book is worth the money.
"...I liked the friend group and the amount of humor and nuance in the writing . And let's speak a moment about the cover...." Read more
"...This is cute and sweet. It’s cheesy , but it knows that it is, and I think that makes it all the better.Olive is adorable...." Read more
"...She did a great job. The vibe feels young and fresh , with a voice that actually sounds like a 26-year-old...." Read more
"...It is filled with humor and sarcasm . The dialogue is amusing and relatable with good banter. The characters are loveable and witty...." Read more
Customers find the characters loveable, witty, and cute. They also say the illustrator is amazing and the book has a vivid, distinct voice.
"...And let's speak a moment about the cover. The Illustrator is amazing and honestly, her cover is what sold me to take the leap and buy the book...." Read more
"... Adam is cute . I really wish this was dual POV. I would LOVE to experience the pining and brooding that I know was going on in his head. But alas...." Read more
"...Well, it's all pretty great, actually. This has such a vivid , distinct voice that I am very much looking forward to whatever's next from..." Read more
"...The characters are loveable and witty. Overall, it's charming , heartwarming, smart, and funny...." Read more
Customers find the plot cute, heartwarming, and frothy. They also say the conflicts and twists feel legitimate and not made for the novel. Readers say the pacing of the romance is perfect. They mention the characters are quirky, realistic, and moving.
"...So yeah, calling all geek-girls, this is a great romance book and I will definitely be reading more of the author's work in the future." Read more
"...is probably not going to be everyone’s favorite FMC but she’s dorky and believable ...." Read more
"...And it is definitely a love story. The romance is central throughout , with a light, fresh feel that gets richer and deeper as the story progresses...." Read more
"...It is filled with humor and sarcasm. The dialogue is amusing and relatable with good banter. The characters are loveable and witty...." Read more
Customers find the writing style flawless, enjoyable, and full of tropes. They also appreciate the inclusion and representation of women in STEM. Readers also love the continuous focus on consent, communication, and support.
"...I appreciated the women in STEM focus and the inclusion and representation in the book ...." Read more
"...Overall, it’s fun and cute. A perfect summer romcom. This was easy to read and I finished it very quickly...." Read more
"...The Love Hypothesis has a very simple style of writing to it, and I’m not saying that in a negative way...." Read more
"...a bit longer than I'd like (11 hours), and I found it difficult to listen to the narrator 's voice at a faster speed...." Read more
Customers find the book has a nice bit of spice, is wholesome, and sweet. They also say it's funny and light, like cotton candy.
"...This is cute and sweet . It’s cheesy, but it knows that it is, and I think that makes it all the better.Olive is adorable...." Read more
"FINAL DECISION: This book is fun and light, like cotton candy . Even the "serious" storyline is really fluff because it lacks complexity...." Read more
"...Tall, academic, and sweet … he’s what dreams are made of..." Read more
"...This book does contain spice . I would say 2.5 spicy peppers out of 5 spicy peppers...." Read more
Customers find the chemistry class in the book nerdy, enjoyable, and chemistry-filled. They also say the book is accurate and a good science rom com. Readers also mention that the banter and chemy between the characters is electric.
"...Tall, academic , and sweet… he’s what dreams are made of..." Read more
"...I felt the world of academia was well established as it was shown, not told...." Read more
"..." is a delightful and charming romance novel that combines scientific curiosity with matters of the heart...." Read more
"...The chemistry was tangible right from the start and they were all so likeable (I even loved the names the author chose for them😆)...." Read more
Customers find the emotional tone of the book heartwarming, low angst, and real. They also say the attraction is almost tangible, and the book is incredibly intimate.
"...The sex scene felt both hot and yet in some moments awkward , tender, and exposing (making it feel all the more real)...." Read more
"...It's a slow burn romance with one incredibly intimate and dynamic love scene - the intimacy and emotional connection are the shining stars here...." Read more
"...The characters are loveable and witty. Overall, it's charming, heartwarming , smart, and funny...." Read more
"...She is so selfless ...." Read more
Customers find the sexual content in the book cheesy, gross, and annoying. They also say the character is immature and annoying, and find the book ridiculous and offensive.
"...Content Warnings: There is one scene with explicit sexual content (or two if you count the bonus chapter), and characters discuss sex at other times...." Read more
"...It's weird and gross . Ok, tangent over...." Read more
"...So much second hand embarrassment in this book . I was literally cringing on behalf of Olive...." Read more
"...Smut score: 3.5/5 (slow burn, explicit but not super kinky other than *one* thing that had me going "ohhhh" 🥵🌶)..." Read more
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September 23, 2021 by Jenna | 4 stars , Books , Reviews
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs. Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
Ever since I first heard about The Love Hypothesis early this year through Nick @ The Infinite Limits of Love , I’ve been waiting with bated breath for it to be released. The book follows Olive, who is a PhD candidate in biology, and Dr Adam Carlsen, an academic in her department, which got me super excited because I have a PhD in psychology and it sounded like a story that I could really relate to. And I absolutely did!
The novel begins with Olive planting a kiss on a stranger late one night in the hallways of Stanford’s biology department, to mislead her best friend into thinking that she’s happily in a relationship. But when said stranger turns out to be the infamous grump and star researcher of the department, and agrees to fake-date Olive to help her out, things start getting a little weird. Olive didn’t expect Adam to be nice to her and she certainly didn’t expect to develop feelings for him either…
I really really enjoyed The Love Hypothesis. It was such an accurate depiction of academia (the good, bad and in-between), which isn’t surprising since the author herself is a professor in neuroscience. I just related to all of the different aspects, including the fear of having to give a conference talk over a poster, the lack of funding, the late nights, the imposter syndrome, the absent advisor (and sadly the abusive one). I loved all of it, though I do have to say that I’ve never ever EVER seen anyone sit on someone else’s lap at a colloquium talk before! I’ve read many books about STEM romances and scientists but I can truly say that this is the first one that has truly and accurately depicted the experience of a female in STEM research for me.
I guess it goes without saying that I also really related to Olive and Adam because they’re just my type of people. I felt such a strong kinship with Olive and was 100% in her corner throughout the entire book. And because Adam was also firmly in Olive’s corner, I connected with his character as well. I really enjoyed reading about their developing relationship and thought they had such a supportive and positive relationship. The Love Hypothesis is an open-door romance and has one quite smutty scene, but what I really appreciated about the scene was the way it tackled Olive’s demisexuality… and the fact that it was kind of awkward – because sex is sometimes just really awkward and not at all like what’s described in romance novels!
I really really loved The Love Hypothesis and thought it was a wonderful debut for Ali Hazelwood. I’ve read the sneak peek to her next novel (coming 2022) and I’m super excited for all that it has to bring! If you’re looking for a great STEM romance, look no further than The Love Hypothesis.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Tags: 2021 reads , contemporary
I HIGHLY recommend this one Tasya! The story is as cute as the cover.
Ohhh thanks for the review Jenna! I’m going to definitely pick this one up for sure!
Hope you enjoy it Jeann! I really loved it and super excited that the author has more books coming.
I’m so happy that you also loved it Hasini! It’s probably in my top 10 reads of the year as well.
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Ali hazelwood's latest novel, love on the brain is out now..
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By ali hazelwood.
Book review, full book summary and synopsis for The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, a delightful rom-com about a fake relationship between a biology Ph.D. student and a professor.
In The Love Hypothesis , Olive is a third-year biology Ph.D. candidate who shares a kiss with a handsome stranger in order make her friend think that she's in a relationship. She's horrified when she realizes the "stranger" is Dr. Adam Carlson, a prominent professor in her department who is known for being a hypercritical and moody tyrant.
She and Adam each have reasons for needing to be in a relationship, and they agree to pretend to date for the sake of appearances. Of course, as she gets to know Adam, it's only a matter of time before she starts feeling something for him, and it becomes clear that her little experiment in fake-dating just might combust...
(The Full Plot Summary is also available, below)
Three years prior, Olive Smith talks to a guy when she's in the bathroom fixing her contacts (and can't see) after her Ph.D. candidate interview. She tells him about her passion for her research. She doesn't catch his name but remembers the conversation distinctly and wonders about the guy she met.
In present day, Olive is a biology Ph.D. student researching early detection methods for pancreatic cancer. She kisses a guy randomly in order to trick her best friend into thinking she's dating someone (so that her best friend Anh won't feel bad about dating Olive's ex). That guy turns out to be Dr. Adam Carlson , a young, handsome and highly-respected tenured faculty member in her department. He's also known for being hypercritical and moody.
Meanwhile, Adam's department chair is worried that he's planning on leaving for another university and has frozen some of his research funds. So, Adam he agrees to pretend to be in a relationship with Olive in order to give the impression he's putting down "roots" here, in hopes they will unfreeze the funds.
As Olive and Adam fake-date, they get to know each other. Olive sees that Adam is demanding and blunt towards his students, but not unkind or mean. Olive confides in him about her mother getting pancreatic cancer, which is why she's doing her research.
Olive soon realizes that she has feelings for Adam, but she's afraid to tell him. When he overhears her talking about a crush, she pretends it's about someone else. Olive also hears someone else refer to a woman Adam's been pining after for years and is surprised at how jealous she feels.
In the meantime, Olive needs more lab space and has been talking to Dr. Tom Benton for a spot at his lab at Harvard. When Tom arrives in town, it turns out he's friends with Adam. Adam and Tom are friends from grad school, and they have recently gotten a large grant for some joint research that Adam is excited about. After Olive completes a report on her research for Tom, he offers her a spot in his lab for the next year.
Olive and Adam's relationship continues to progress until they attend a science conference in Boston. Olive's research has been selected for a panel presentation, while Adam is a keynote speaker. There, Olive is sexually harassed by Tom, who makes advances on her. When she rejects him, he accuses her of someone who sleeps around to get ahead. He also says that he'll deny it if she tells anyone and that they won't believe her.
While Olive does finally sleep with Adam at the conference, she soon tearfully breaks things off since she doesn't want to complicate things with Adam's joint research project with Tom. Adam is also in the process of applying for a spot at Harvard.
Olive is certain no one will believe her about Tom until she realizes that the accidentally recorded the conversation where he made advances and threatened her. Meanwhile, Olive's roommate Malcolm has started seeing Dr. Holden Rodriguez, a faculty member who is a childhood friend of Adam's. Olive and Malcolm turn to Holden for advice, who encourages them to tell Adam about the recording. He points out that he thinks the main reason that Adam is considering a move to Harvard is because Olive is supposed to be going there.
Olive finds Adam and shows him the video. He is incensed at Tom and reports it to their faculty. When Adam returns from Boston, he reports that Tom has been fired. Meanwhile, Olive has been reaching out to other cancer researchers for spots at other labs, and she's gotten promising responses. Olive tells Adam that she loves him and that she never liked anyone else. Adam admits that he remembered her from the day he met her in the bathroom and that she's the one he's been interested in for years.
Ten months later at the anniversary of their first kiss, Olive and Adam re-create the kiss to mark their anniversary.
For more detail, see the full Chapter-by-Chapter Summary .
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The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood came out a few months ago, and I didn’t really pay much attention to it. However, people seem to really be enjoying this book, and after reading The School for Good Mothers , I was really in mood for something light and fun.
In the Love Hypothesis, Olive is a third-year biology Ph.D. student at Stanford who ends up fake-dating a young and handsome tenured professor in her department. All the usual rom-com shenanigans ensue.
The Love Hypothesis is an unapologetically cheesy rom-com novel — with an upbeat attitude, meet cutes, fake-dating tropes, etc. — but it’s also a genuinely fun and often funny book. It hits a lot of familiar notes if you’re familiar with this genre, but somehow Ali Hazelwood has arranged them in a way that ends up being delightful and entertaining.
The book is super melodramatic at parts, uses so many tropes I couldn’t even list them all here if I was inclined to do so and is predictable in the way that rom-coms are always kind of predictable. That all said, I still had a fantastic time reading it and it flew by.
This is a short review because honestly it’s not that complicated to explain that this book is super cheesy and super fun.
If you like “chick lit” and rom-coms, you should definitely look into this book. I tend to be a little hypercritical of books in this genre, but I really enjoyed The Love Hypothesis . I found myself smiling and chuckling quite a bit as I read it.
This book is a straight-up cheesy rom-com — it is funny, melodramatic and fun as hell. I thought it was great.
See The Love Hypothesis on Amazon.
Narrated by : Callie Dalton Length : 11 hours 8 minutes
I listened to about half of this on audiobook. I think the audiobook is solid. The narrator is easy to listen to and does a good job with it.
Hear a sample of The Love Hypothesis audiobook on Libro.fm.
Read the first pages of The Love Hypothesis
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As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs.
Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
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Title: The Love Hypothesis Author: Ali Hazelwood Publisher: Berkley Publication date: September 14, 2021 Length: 352 pages Genre: Contemporary romance Source: Purchased Rating:
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn’t believe in lasting romantic relationships–but her best friend does, and that’s what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor–and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford’s reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive’s career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding… six-pack abs. Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
EVERYBODY seems to either have read or to be reading this contemporary romance — so I gave in to temptation and joined the crowd! And mostly, it’s a really enjoyable, sweet tale.
But — ugh — let me just say that I do not like the synopsis (above). It just doesn’t convey the charm of the characters or what’s special about the book’s set-up.
So… Olive is a Ph.D. student working her butt off, living off her meager grad stipend, and basically focused solely on her work. A complication arises when it becomes clear that the guy she’d started casually dating is actually much more interested in Olive’s best friend, who seems to return the interest. But Anh would never agree to date him and break the friend code, even if Olive insists she’s just not that into him.
When Olive lies to Anh and says she’ll be out on a date with a new love interest, leaving Anh free to start a romance with Jeremy, things get complicated. Anh sees Olive in the lab building — clearly not on a date. So, as the synopsis says: Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees — who just happens to be Dr. Adam Carlsen, a young powerhouse in the academic field, with a reputation of being an arrogant ass when it comes to his grad students.
Olive is embarrassed and super awkward… but as it turns out, a fake dating scenario would benefit both Olive and Adam. Olive needs Anh to believe that Olive is in a relationship so that she can pursue her own love life guilt-free, and Adam needs Stanford to believe he’s in a relationship so they don’t consider him a flight risk and cut off his grant money. So hey, what’s a little fake-dating between (kind of) colleagues? Olive assumes a weekly coffee date is enough to seal the deal and make it believable.
Of course, it’s more complicated than that, as Olive and Adam are constantly thrown together, and (of course) develop an easy rapport, ridiculously cute banter, physical attraction, and, eventually, real and actual feelings.
The Love Hypothesis follows many of the standard story beats of the fake dating trope, but it’s got a lot of unique elements going for it as well. First of all, the science and academia setting is terrific. I love seeing a woman in science, here presented as dedicated to the point of obsession when it comes to her profession and her research. Olive is smart, motivated, and committed, and her struggle to be taken seriously and get the opportunities she deserves is well portrayed and convincing.
Also, the academic setting provides a structure that I haven’t come across much in contemporary romances. The science and lab work and dissertation meetings are all part of the plot. I’ve seen too many romances where we’re informed that the lead character is a respected professional, but we never see her doing any actual work. Here, we follow Olive in and out of meetings and labs and conferences, and get a real feel for the texture of her life as a graduate student (as well as the truly minimal financial resources she has… so yes, it’s a big deal when Adam pays for her pumpkin spice lattes!).
An added unique element is Olive’s sexuality, which I’d describe (although not labeled as such in the book) as demisexuality. Olive is fairly inexperienced when it comes to sex, mostly having tried it a few times during her college years as something to check off a list, rather than experiencing desire. As she explains, she’s only able to feel sexual attraction when with someone she likes and trusts, and this hasn’t really happened for her previously in her life.
Olive and Adam do have great chemistry, and I enjoyed them together as a couple. Despite Adam’s fearsome reputation in the department, he warms up around Olive, and they’re able to joke and exchange quips together that would probably make his grads’ heads spin.
I’m not typically a big fan of awkward encounters, which seem to be a staple in contemporary romances, and this is an obstacle for me in The Love Hypothesis as well. There’s a lap-sitting scene and a sunscreen scene, to name but a couple, that are kind of clunky and weird — I think they’re meant to be funny, but really, just made me cringe and feel uncomfortable.
Also, some of the lying really bugged me after a while. Olive persists in lying about the fake-dating to Anh even well past the point where she should have just come clean. She also lies to Adam after he overhears a conversation that could reveal her feelings about him, and continues to allow him to misinterpret her feelings even after it’s clear that she should be honest. She’s way too smart for some of the dumb decisions she makes about her emotions and her personal life, and even though she’s portrayed as someone so focused on science that she’s neglected her inner life, I feel like this goes overboard and undersells Olive’s maturity and good sense.
If you’ve read any of my other romance reviews, you may know that I prefer my romances with steaminess on the implied rather than explicit side of things. In The Love Hypothesis , there’s really just one major sex scene, but it is very explicit. Because it was limited to one encounter, I didn’t feel that it took over the book or overwhelmed the reading experience — but still, if you prefer these kind of scenes to be off-screen or fuzzy, just be aware in advance that the sex in The Love Hypothesis is graphic.
Overall, I really enjoyed The Love Hypothesis and found the characters and the set-up charming and off-beat. I love seeing women in STEM professions, especially when the professional aspect is treated seriously and not just as a side note. I’ll definitely want to read more by this author!
6 thoughts on “ book review: the love hypothesis by ali hazelwood ”.
I’m with you on the cringey bits and preferring the steamy stuff to be implied. But I like that that the setting in this one actually plays a part and the characters are shown working. Though I don’t read many romances, but like you I find mentions of work or professions but rarely anyone doing the said work. Great review
Thanks so much! It was really refreshing to see the main character dealing with actual work issues in her lab, dealing with professors, dealing with grants and equipment, etc. I guess it helps that the author herself is a scientist with a PhD!
I loved Adam and Olive; I thought they were such great characters…and that this was a fun romance. Especially with that academic setting. 🙂
Yes, definitely lots of fun! And I didn’t mention it in the review, but I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator did a really super job creating voices for Olive and Adam.
I feel like the last person on the planet to read this. Even my daughter has read it, lol.
I guess that makes me the 2nd to last! 🙂 Did your daughter like it?
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The love hypothesis, common sense media reviewers.
Uneven romance has explicit sex, features women in STEM.
What you will—and won't—find in this book.
An author's note explains Title IX and offers webs
You have to be strong and tough to make it in the
Olive and Ahn are good models of women in STEM. Th
Olive reads as White, is from Canada, and is very
An incident of verbal sexual assault with an attem
Other than a few kisses and some romantic tension,
"Bulls--t," "clit," "clusterf--k," "c--k," "d--k,"
A few food and beverage brands, and a couple of en
All characters are adults of legal drinking age in
Parents need to know that Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis is an adult romance set in the higher levels of academia at Stanford University. Ph.D. candidate Olive starts a fake relationship with a professor in hopes of inspiring her best friend to go for the man she's really interested in. Other than a few…
An author's note explains Title IX and offers websites supporting women and BIPOC women in STEM academic fields. The overall story provides insight into graduate and postgraduate academic life and careers, especially in STEM fields.
You have to be strong and tough to make it in the academic world, especially in STEM fields. Don't be afraid to speak up when you've been harmed or you learn about something unethical. Your web of lies will eventually come to light, and when it does, it may cause more hurt than being truthful from the start would have.
Olive and Ahn are good models of women in STEM. They're extremely loyal and supportive of each other, and Anh creates chances to support other women, especially BIPOC women in STEM. Adam is very protective and kind on a personal level toward Olive, but to his students he's harsh and uncompromising and seems uncaring. Olive makes a grand gesture out of compassion for Anh and models perseverance in advancing her research and career.
Olive reads as White, is from Canada, and is very slim. Adam implies he's Jewish and is very tall and powerfully built. Best friend Anh's family is from Vietnam, and she identifies as a woman of color. Roommate Malcolm reads as White, dates men, and enters a romantic relationship with another man. Olive wonders if she's asexual.
Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.
An incident of verbal sexual assault with an attempted kiss and coercion. An excerpt at the end from a future book has sexual harassment and cyberbullying. A man pins another against a wall by the collar and threatens to kill him.
Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.
Other than a few kisses and some romantic tension, there's only one sex scene, but it's extended, explicit, and meant to arouse. Oral and genital sex, manual stimulation, genital penetration, sucking nipples and genitals, and orgasm are described in detail with some crude words like "clit" and "c--k." Good examples of consent are modeled, and birth control and being "clean" are talked about. A few times adults talk about sex or sex acts like sixty-nining, butt stuff, and getting a "hand job."
Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.
"Bulls--t," "clit," "clusterf--k," "c--k," "d--k," "f--k," "f--king," "holy crap," "holy s--t," "pr--k," "s--t," "s--tshow," ass," "assness," "bitch," "bitching," "butt," "crap," "crapfest," "dammit," "goddamned," "hell," "jackass," "pee," "smart-ass." "Jesus" as an exclamation.
Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.
A few food and beverage brands, and a couple of entertainment franchises to establish character and setting.
All characters are adults of legal drinking age in California, where the story is set. Very little actual drinking is depicted, but there are mentions of past drunkenness, a weekly beer and s'mores night, and taking advantage of free alcohol at academic meetings and conferences.
Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.
Parents need to know that Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis is an adult romance set in the higher levels of academia at Stanford University. Ph.D. candidate Olive starts a fake relationship with a professor in hopes of inspiring her best friend to go for the man she's really interested in. Other than a few kisses and some romantic tension, there's only one sex scene, but it's extended, explicit, and meant to arouse. Oral and genital sex, manual stimulation, genital penetration, sucking nipples and genitals, and orgasm are described in detail with words like "clit" and "c--k." Main character Olive experiences verbal sexual assault, and an excerpt from another book in the back has sexual harassment and cyberbullying. Strong language includes "c--k," "d--k," "f--k," "pr--k," "s--t," and more. Adults mention past excessive drinking, look forward to free alcohol at university events, and have a weekly "beer and s'mores night." Two characters remember one of them projectile vomiting after eating bad shrimp, but it's not described. Olive is an orphan with no family. Her mother died of pancreatic cancer, so grief and loss are important themes, along with the struggles women still face in STEM-related fields.
Community reviews.
Based on 1 parent review
THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS is about Stanford graduate student Olive, who needs to convince her best friend, Anh, that it's OK for Anh to date a guy Olive had recently been seeing but wasn't really interested in. So she hatches a plan to "fake-date" none other than the Biology department's most prestigious professor, Adam Carlsen, who's also a huge jerk. As Olive and Adam's ruse gets harder and harder to keep up, Olive starts to feel like she wishes their dating wasn't actually fake. Will she be able to untangle her web of lies without ruining everything, for everyone?
This romance set in the lofty world of a prestigious graduate school program has its ups and downs. It's refreshing to see women in STEM represented and important to highlight how much many women struggle in that world. The Love Hypothesis has some funny banter, especially with colorful supporting characters. Readers who enjoy very familiar romcom tropes will feel at home here, because this story is chock-full of them. The one explicit sex scene is easy to skip for those who aren't interested. A big drawback is Olive's truly bad and unrealistic decision making, which strains believability and takes the reader outside the story.
Families can talk about the graphic sex in The Love Hypothesis . Is it over-the-top? Realistic? Is reading about it different from seeing it in movies, videos, and other media?
What are some concerns about reading or watching explicit sex ? Do you compare yourself or your body to the characters? Does it make you afraid, feel creepy, or unsure about what sex is like for real people?
What about all the strong language? Is it realistic? Is it a big deal? Why, or why not?
Talk about women studying and working in STEM fields. What are some of the challenges Olive and Ahn face? How do they deal with them? Who supports them? What can men do to make STEM fields more welcoming and inclusive?
Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.
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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
What Page Is the Spicy Scene in the Love Hypothesis?
The Love Hypothesis, a contemporary romance novel by Ali Hazelwood, has been making waves in the literary world with its steamy and captivating storyline. Readers are often curious about the exact page where the spicy scene takes place, as it adds an extra layer of excitement to the story. In this article, we will explore the love story, its spicy scene, and answer some frequently asked questions related to it.
The Love Hypothesis follows the story of Olive Smith, a highly ambitious and driven PhD candidate who is determined to prove her scientific theories. When she needs help to conduct an experiment, she reluctantly approaches Adam Carlsen, a charming and notorious playboy in her department. As they work together, sparks fly, leading to an intense and passionate relationship.
While the entire novel is filled with romantic tension and sizzling chemistry between Olive and Adam, the spicy scene that readers often seek occurs on page 247. This scene is a pivotal moment in their relationship, where their suppressed desires finally come to fruition. Ali Hazelwood masterfully crafts this scene, ensuring that readers are fully immersed in the characters’ emotions and the heat between them.
As with any book, readers have various questions about the spicy scene in The Love Hypothesis. Here are seven frequently asked questions and their answers:
1. Is the spicy scene explicit?
Yes, the spicy scene in The Love Hypothesis is explicit. Ali Hazelwood doesn’t shy away from describing the intense passion and desire between Olive and Adam. Readers should be prepared for a steamy encounter.
2. Does the spicy scene contribute to the overall story?
Absolutely! The spicy scene is a pivotal moment in Olive and Adam’s relationship. It deepens their connection and explores their emotional and physical boundaries. It adds depth and complexity to their love story.
3. Does the spicy scene overshadow the rest of the book?
While the spicy scene is undoubtedly a memorable moment, it doesn’t overshadow the rest of the book. The Love Hypothesis is a well-rounded romance novel that explores various aspects of Olive and Adam’s relationship, their personal growth, and their journeys as individuals.
4. Is the spicy scene gratuitous or does it serve a purpose?
The spicy scene serves a purpose in the narrative. It showcases the characters’ intense attraction and allows them to explore their desires. It also helps to deepen their emotional connection and further develops their relationship.
5. Can the spicy scene be skipped without missing out on the story?
While the spicy scene is significant in terms of character development and relationship progression, it is not essential to the overall plot. Readers who prefer to skip explicit content can still enjoy the book without missing out on the story’s essence.
6. What makes the spicy scene in The Love Hypothesis stand out?
The spicy scene in The Love Hypothesis stands out due to Ali Hazelwood’s excellent writing skills. Her ability to capture the characters’ emotions and the intense chemistry between them makes the scene incredibly memorable and captivating.
7. Is The Love Hypothesis suitable for all readers?
The Love Hypothesis is a romance novel intended for adult readers due to its explicit content. It is recommended for readers who enjoy steamy scenes and are comfortable with mature themes.
In conclusion, The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood is a captivating romance novel that includes a spicy scene on page 247. This explicit scene serves a purpose in the story, deepening the connection between the main characters and adding an extra layer of passion to their relationship. While the scene is significant, it doesn’t overshadow the rest of the book, which explores various aspects of love, growth, and personal journeys. Readers who enjoy steamy scenes and adult romance will find The Love Hypothesis an engaging and satisfying read.
r/RomanceBooks is a discussion sub for readers of romance novels. Home of the magic search button and endless book recommendations as well as discussions about tropes and characters, Author AMAs, book clubs, and more. Happy Endings guaranteed.
So. I read The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood and I loved it.
The story line is rather predictable but it's not horrible nor a deal breaker for me because Ali Hazelwood's writing made it a non issue for me. I thought the characters were super cute and was rooting for them the whole time, of course!
There's one sex scene, but it's two chapters long and it is SO. GOOD. Like, best and most real I've read in a long time. I loved it. It inspired me to also go ask my husband for some love, and if a romance does that, then it means it's pretty damn good in my book.
I spent undergrad doing scientific research in a lab much like Olive did, except she was doing her PhD. Let me just say, if you've ever worked in a lab like that, you will loooove this book. My husband also has worked in a lab and there were some sentences that I read him where we were both like "the author has to have been in academia" because it was too true. We said this before I read the about the author section and found out she actually was/is in academia.
ANYWAYS. I love this book. I highly recommend.
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The day before I was set to chat with Ali Hazelwood , the news broke that her debut novel The Love Hypothesis had officially become a New York Times bestseller , charting at #9 in print and at #11 on the combined print and ebook lists. Understandably, Hazelwood's recollection of the moment she found out about it from her editor at Berkley Publishing is a little hazy: "I think I had grilled cheese in my mouth. I have vague memories of trying not to choke."
But it's no surprise, taking into account that the book itself has been absolutely blowing up a certain section of TikTok lately — as well as considering The Love Hypothesis 's origin story. When Hazelwood decided to make the leap from writing fanfiction to becoming a published author, readers flocked in droves, and even though The Love Hypothesis is a completely original work, there are still some nods to its beginnings — like the cover, for example. In my conversation with Hazelwood, which you can read below, I spoke with her about how both her background in fanfic and in STEM informed the writing of The Love Hypothesis , the one steamy scene in particular that didn't make the final cut, and what she can tease about her next book.
COLLIDER: Congratulations on the book being out! I think some people know the backstory of how it came to be, but for those who don't, what's the genesis behind The Love Hypothesis ?
ALI HAZELWOOD: I think it was a lot of just luck and chances and opportunities. I was really, really into writing fanfiction, first for the Star Trek fandom and then for the Star Wars fandom. And I loved it. It was just, it was this amazing community. I made a lot of friends and I was just having a lot of fun. And then what happened is that I started slowly thinking about trying to write something original, just to challenge myself and to do something different. And while I was in that kind of mood, my agent started reading my fanfiction on AO3 and then she reached out with a DM. She was like, "I saw that you wrote something about maybe pulling some of your fics and reworking them. And I wanted to tell you that I'm a literary agent and I would love to see you some of your manuscripts, if you're interested in it."
And so that's how I took the fanfiction of mine that I thought was the most reworkable and I sent it to her and then I signed with her. And then after approximately 70 billion more revisions, both with her and an editor... we got a lot of RNRs [revise and resubmits] that didn't pan out but made the book better, because we got really good feedback. Then we ended up at Berkely with my current editor, Sarah [Blumenstock], who is amazing, and yeah, now it's out.
I feel like we're definitely seeing more authors who are like, "I totally got my background in fanfiction and there's nothing wrong with that." One of the more famous examples is obviously Christina Lauren.
HAZELWOOD: Christina Lauren. They're amazing.
Or even authors today who are like, "Oh yeah, I'm writing this mainstream book, but I still have an AO3 profile." So I appreciate that we're seeing the barriers break down around what the public perception of fanfiction is and how it really is such a great breeding ground for authors to find their voice.
HAZELWOOD: Absolutely. Fanfiction is just an amazing medium. It's great, like you said, to find your voice, to explore things that you usually don't find in traditional publishing. But it's also just great to feel a sense of community and to get to know people, to find someone who's like-minded and is interested in similar things. It's very hard to make friends as an adult. And I feel like I truly found my adult friends through fanfiction and through the fandom community.
And I just, I'm very grateful to my publisher that they embraced the fanfiction part. They were like, "Yes, we're going to own this. For the cover, we're going to use fanart made for the fanfiction, if you want to." They were just great with that. I do think traditional publishing is getting more and more interested in fanfiction and in embracing it. And maybe they're doing well because of money and marketing and stuff like that, but I'm just really happy that this is happening and that fanfiction is gaining legitimacy, because it always had legitimacy.
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I want to talk a little bit too about the setting of the book, and I know your personal background is in STEM. So did that inform your inspiration on where to set the story, drawing from your own experiences?
HAZELWOOD: Yeah, 100%. I'd been wanting to write fanfiction set in academia just because it's really... I'm a professor right now, but I feel like my entire adult life has been spent in academia. I feel like I would struggle to write any other setting, in a weird way. So it was just the more natural setting for a story. My next book is going to be set in academia and my third book is going to be in academia. And yeah, that's the easiest thing for me.
One of the things I personally love about the book is how it references romance tropes in the world, but then the book itself subverts the tropes. I'm thinking specifically about the only-one-bed scene, and then there's not only one bed, which felt like a really funny wink at romance readers. What made you decide to include that meta-awareness in the story?
HAZELWOOD: It's actually really funny. I never would have thought to include that if the story hadn't been fanfiction originally. I was posting it chapter by chapter and I was writing it chapter by chapter. And I remember all the comments saying, "They're going to go to the conference and there's going to be only one bed."
So it started as just like a conversation with other people in the fandom, who were at the same time writing fanfiction about other iterations of the same characters. It was just so much fun. It was kind of like a collective effort there.
You had talked about how when you were reworking the fic for publication, there were a lot of edits, and I'm assuming a lot of things ended up on the chopping block. Is there a deleted scene that didn't make it into the final novel that you maybe wished you could have kept in?
HAZELWOOD: So when Adam and Olive break up — not really break up, but when she goes to his hotel room and she's like, "It's over." Originally, they ended up having sex in that scene. And we took it out because we thought it was more poignant, or I don't know, more heartfelt if it was only a kiss. And it was, in a way, but the fanfiction person within me kind of misses...
Let them have one more time!
HAZELWOOD: The fanfiction ho within me was like, "I wish we had kept that sex scene." But honestly, honestly, we talked about it — my editor, my agent, and I — and it was a good call from a story-structure perspective.
So you mentioned you've got a second and third book in the works. I'm sure you probably can't really talk about book three yet, but is there anything you can tease about book two coming up?
HAZELWOOD: Book two is about a neuroscientist who is selected to work on a project at NASA. And she's super excited about it, until she gets told that the person she's going to co-lead the project with is an engineer that she used to work with in the past, and they're kind of enemies. Or at least she thinks they're enemies, one of those things. And that's the story of them working together on this project. And it's coming out in August 2022.
I thought it would be fun to wrap up with a couple of rapid-fire questions. Enemies-to-lovers, or friends-to-lovers?
HAZELWOOD: Enemies-to-lovers. Reylo forever.
Secret billionaire or secret baby?
HAZELWOOD: Secret billionaire.
Marriage of convenience or amnesia?
HAZELWOOD: Marriage of convenience.
Coffee or tea?
HAZELWOOD: Tea.
I feel like I know the answer to this last one, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Macfadyen Darcy or Firth Darcy?
HAZELWOOD: Macfadyen. I mean, 2005 forever. Even though I do appreciate Firth. He's a good high-quality Darcy, but it's just not my Darcy.
I feel like everybody has a very strong opinion, based on which one you saw first. That lake scene, I'm sure that's very formative.
HAZELWOOD: 100%.
But for me? He's walking through the field in the morning mist, and that's it. In the long coat.
HAZELWOOD: He says, "I love you" three times. I mean, she has bewitched him body and soul. Come on, come on. The hand flex!
The Love Hypothesis is currently available in print, e-book and audio wherever books are sold .
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The love hypothesis.
Author | Ali Hazelwood, Callie Dalton, Teddy Hamilton |
---|---|
Release | 9–14–2021 |
Audience | General content |
Publisher | Books on Tape |
Imprint | Penguin Audio |
Subjects | Fiction, Romance, Humor (Fiction) |
Now see Adam pine for Olive in a special bonus chapter!
The Instant New York Times Bestseller and TikTok Sensation!
As seen on THE VIEW!
A BuzzFeed Best Summer Read of 2021
When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman’s carefully calculated theories on love into chaos.
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn’t believe in lasting romantic relationships - but her best friend does, and that’s what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor - and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford’s reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive’s career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs.
Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
10 perfect scenes from romance movies that still blow us away.
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10 movie love stories that will change any cynical romantic, 10 movies every hopeless romantic will fall in love with.
Romance is one of the most popular movie genres for a reason, as their captivating stories and iconic romantic scenes have told some of the greatest love stories of all time . Cinema has enchanted audiences with myriad different kinds of romance, but sometimes all it takes is one unforgettable scene to make these films iconic. In some cases, these moments signal the crowd-pleasing moment when the relationship finally comes together. Other cases can show the tragedy of a romance falling apart.
Regardless of whether they induce tears of joy or sadness, these classic romance movie moments make the love between the characters undeniable. Not only have these scenes stood out in the romance genre for all these years, but they are some of the most memorable in Hollywood history, period. A well-executed romantic scene can leave a lasting memory, but some romantic movies execute their key moments better than others.
Between the romantic leads' crackling chemistry, grand gestures, and memorable kisses, the best rom-coms of all time know how to make audiences swoon.
Holden professes his love.
Not every romantic movie has main characters who fall blindly in love with each other. Sometimes, love can be unrequited, as in Chasing Amy . In Chasing Amy , Holden and Alyssa are friends. However, things are complicated by the fact that he is madly in love with her. While Holden and Alyssa are in the car with the rain beating down, he throws caution to the wind and declares his love for her in one of the most beautiful and heartfelt monologues featured in romantic movies.
At the time, Ben Affleck's career was filled with supporting roles as bullies, but this performance helped make him more of a vulnerable leading man.
Since its release, Chasing Amy has developed a problematic reputation for its storyline of a gay woman being seduced into a heterosexual relationship. While there is still a lot to unpack regarding this aspect of the movie, with this monologue, writer-director Kevin Smith is at least able to make the audience understand what Holden is going through. It is a desperate, almost involuntary confession . Anyone who has ever been in love with someone who didn't love them back can relate to what he's saying.
9 sleepless in seattle (1993), annie and sam meet at the empire state building.
Sleepless In Seattle features several heartwarming romantic moments, but the Empire State Building scene is one of its best. In the scene, Annie is at the top of the Empire State Building staring out at New York when Jonah and Sam walk in. The moment they look into each other's eyes, they just know they are meant for each other . This iconic romance scene is made even better by a musical score that perfectly captures the moment.
The audience can breathe a collective sigh of relief as this romance that has always been building from a distance is finally given a chance.
Sleepless in Seattle is viewed as the best Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan movie despite the fact that this moment at the end is the only time they actually share the screen together. That speaks to the power of their yearning and how great the chemistry is between them . The audience can breathe a collective sigh of relief as this romance that has always been building from a distance is finally given a chance.
What is unique about this moment compared to other big scenes in romance movies is that it is simply the beginning of the relationship and the promise that it has a future.
8 a walk to remember (2002), landon helps jamie with her wish list.
A Walk To Remember has one of the most tragic endings in a romance movie ever. Despite that, it also has one of the most romantic scenes that can stay with viewers long after the credits roll. In A Walk To Remember , Jamie, who is dying from leukemia, makes a wish list of things she would like to do before the fateful day comes .
Landon takes her to the state line so she can be in the middle of two towns, thus fulfilling her dream of being in two places at once, and gives her a butterfly tattoo.
In one of the best romantic gestures ever seen in a romantic movie, Landon helps Jamie with her wish list. He takes her to the state line so she can be in the middle of two towns, thus fulfilling her dream of being in two places at once, and gives her a butterfly tattoo. The moment sweeps the audience up in the romance the same way it does with the characters.
They all know what is coming and that this story is not going to have the happy ending that everyone hopes for. However, at this moment, Jamie and Landon are able to forget about her grim future and enjoy their time together . It is a beautifully bittersweet moment that confirms, as tragic as it is that this romance will be cut short, it is heartwarming that Landon is going to make Jamie's life as perfect as he can.
The 2000s generated many romance movies, and the best of the decade stand out for their unconventional storytelling and relatable relationships.
Mia and sebastian dance in the park.
La La Land beautifully brought classic Hollywood back to the big screen and makes a huge case for why audiences need more sweeping romance movie musicals. Winner of six Oscars, La La Land is renowned for its phenomenal music and awe-inspiring dance numbers, but the scene in the park where Mia and Sebastian dance takes the cake for stand-out scenes. While walking in the park, Sebastian breaks into a song about how Mia is not his type.
That line is obviously not the most romantic and would turn many people off, but when the two break into a perfectly choreographed dance number, it becomes clear that they are fighting the inevitable . While La La Land had already established itself as a fun and vibrant musical up to this point, this is the first time Mia and Sebastian have a song together, and the chemistry between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling really gets a chance to shine.
The moment plays on the trope of two people who definitely have a connection but are trying to play it off like they are not interested in each other. The fun of this charming denial is only made more memorable by the fact that the number is shot overlooking Los Angeles against a beautiful sunset backdrop.
Lloyd's iconic boombox serenade.
When it comes to grand romantic gestures in movies, very few can beat Lloyd's boombox serenade in Say Anything . In the classic romance movie, Lloyd and Diane embark on a summertime romance with many people thinking they are not right for each other. Diane eventually relents to the fact that she should move on from Lloyd and pursue her adult life. With this iconic moment, Lloyd tries to win Diane back by playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" on a boombox outside her window .
The boombox serenade scene will go down in history as one of cinema's most remarkable declarations of love.
Part of what makes the moment work so well is John Cuack's performance in the moment. As he holds the boombox over his head and looks up to Diane's window, he has a hopeful yet definite look on his face. It is as if he is putting it all into this final declaration and hopes that she will see how obvious it is that they are meant to be together.
5 casablanca (1942), rick tells ilsa to leave.
Most romantic movies are about two people who are in love with each other ultimately ending up together, but that isn't the case for llsa and Rick. When it's time for them to get on a plane together, Rick tells Ilsa in the most heartfelt speech that she should leave with Victor instead , because if she doesn't, she will regret it for the rest of her life.
Rick letting Ilsa go is one of the saddest moments in movie history, but it shows that he loves her enough to want to see her be happy with someone else. He knows she will live a better life than she would have had she stayed with him. The famous Casablanca quote , " We'll always have Paris ," speaks to what makes this movie romance so iconic.
Rick and Ilsa had a passionate and complex relationship, but it was not meant to last. Their romance was a brief one that they can always look back on with fondness, but the unfair reality of their world means that they must move on from each other. Humphrey Bogart's stoic performance as Rick plays perfectly against Ingrid Bergman's heartbroken realization that he is right.
While not everyone is a romance movie fan, there are some films that are so love-infused, even the most cynical viewer will fall in love with them.
Mark's cue card confession.
To this day, Love Actually remains one of the most beloved romantic Christmas movies because of its incredible cast, humor, and heartwarming moments. One of the most famous moments comes with the storyline involving the characters of Mark and Juliet. Mark is in love with Juliet, but she has just married his best friend. Despite knowing this, Mark shows up at Juliet's front door with cue cards declaring that she is perfect and that he is in love with her .
Unrequited love often stings, and it's made worse when the woman in question is unattainable because she is monogamously married. Still, there is something incredibly touching about Mark's confession of love. The moment is somewhat controversial as some feel Mark is betraying his friend. However, Mark's confession is not about trying to win over Juliet but rather putting his love for her behind him.
He is pouring out his heart so that he can move on, but he is also taking the time to express to her how much she means to him. When he is done, the two are able to move on with this sweet moment between them serving as a new starting point for their friendship .
3 notting hill (1999), anna asks william to love her.
Over the years, Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant have been featured in some of the most romantic movies, but their love story in Notting Hill is one of the genre's most memorable. The movie is one of the great star-crossed lovers romance movies with Grant's William a simple bookstore owner who strikes up an unexpected romance with a movie star, Anna (Roberts).
After a tumultuous relationship, William is done with Anna, but she follows him to the bookstore and tells him how she feels about him. When Anna confesses her love for him, William lets her down gently, to which she says, " I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her ."
This is one of the most iconic lines in rom-com movie history because of Roberts' sheer earnestness in its delivery and how perfectly Anna's words speak to this particular romance. Her celebrity has been the thing that comes between these two and is too much for William to take in the end. However, in this vulnerable moment, she reminds him that she is a person just like him.
2 when harry met sally (1989), harry and sally's heartfelt new year's eve reunion.
When Harry Met Sally is a movie that attempts to address the question of whether a man and a woman can be friends without romance getting involved. Harry and Sally are long-term friends who have been there for each other through their various failed relationships. Through their long debates about whether female and male relationships can remain platonic, the two end up falling in love with each other.
After pushing her away out of fear of commitment, Harry finally has the guts to tell Sally how he feels and follows her to a New Year's Eve party to declare his feelings for her. With "It Had To Be You" by Frank Sinatra playing in the background, Harry lists all the reasons he loves Sally . It is one of the great final scenes in a rom-com with the movie concluding that, no, they could not just be friends, but what they have is perhaps even better.
Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan have great chemistry in the movie, being able to show the growth of this relationship over the years and through different stages. Their performances in this moment are particularly great with Crystal showing the excitement of finally realizing the truth of their relationship and Ryan playing the moment with anger and resistance which gradually becomes happiness.
The best romance films have characters defying all odds for love, which captures the hearts of all hopeless romantics.
Noah tells allie it's not over.
The Notebook is another heartbreaking romance story about Noah and Allie. Exploring the romance of their youth, their happiness is torn apart by Noach going off to war, and when he unexpectedly returns, he finds that things are different. When Noah and Allie get caught in a storm and have to dock for safety, Allie confronts Noah about why he hadn't written to her; it's now too late for them as she's engaged to be married. Noah reveals that he did write to her, and declares it will never be over between them, kissing her.
The audience desperately wants to see these two back together and this moment comes after so much build-up, breaking away all of the tension and allowing them to return to that passion they had for each other.
There are various elements to love about Noah and Allie's relationship, but Noah fighting for him and Allie to stay together while a storm rages around them is undeniably the most romantic scene in the movie . The audience desperately wants to see these two back together and this moment comes after so much build-up, breaking away all of the tension and allowing them to return to that passion they had for each other. The moment is also important for their story as a whole with Noah continuing to fight for them long into their lives and against many hardships.
48 pages • 1 hour read
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue-Chapter 3
Chapters 4-6
Chapters 7-8
Chapters 9-11
Chapters 12-13
Chapters 14-15
Chapters 16-19
Chapter 20-Epilogue
Character Analysis
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Fake dating is a popular trope in the romance genre . Exactly as the name suggests, fake dating involves two (or more) people pretending to be involved with one another, often for reasons that have nothing to do with any desire they might have to actually date their fake partner. Olive enters a fake relationship with Adam believing it will come to an end and she’ll move on while Anh and Jeremy get their happily ever after. Due to her demisexuality and dedication to her research, Olive sees no future with Adam until their lighthearted banter and meaningful conversations capture her heart.
Adam thwarts the fake dating trope with another common romance trope, the secret crush. While he tells Olive his main reason for entering the fake relationship is frozen funds, he has also been pining after her for years and welcomes the opportunity to spend time with her and get to know her better. As the fake dating trope dictates, Olive’s feelings eventually grow to match Adam’s, until both can’t imagine life without one another. Their fake dating becomes real love by the end of the book.
By Ali Hazelwood
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Love on the Brain
Love, Theoretically
Appearance Versus Reality
View Collection
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Pride Month Reads
The Best of "Best Book" Lists
Truth & Lies
Valentine's Day Reads: The Theme of Love
Calling this a “good time” for anything might appear facetious. But the old saw about the “ill wind” has often been more relevant than would be expected. Perhaps GA’s hypothesis remains all but invisible, but that only means that its likely long-term effects will remain invisible to all but those able to detach themselves from the clichés of the moment. That people are arguing over the rights of trans-men to compete in women’s sports may simply be said to reflect a high level of confusion over basic issues that should “normally” be settled, but whose opening up to question reflects less a new problem to be solved than a new need to affirm one’s resentment of what had been normal reality.
That in 1981 I proposed a preliminary version of GA’s basic thesis in a less than minimal context, making my book unlikely to be read in its entirety by those who might have found its basic thesis of interest, is one of those “ironies of history” that can be appreciated only après coup . The distinction I attempted to draw between a formal and an institutional theory of representation was meant to forestall criticism from followers of Girard who understood the beginnings of humanity to emerge from a meurtre émissaire , the killing of a “scapegoat” arbitrarily chosen from the group as concentrating the aggressivity of the surrounding community to which his death and sparagmos would bring peace, following which, presumably, the possibility of scenic communication as it exists within all human communities would emerge. But continued reflection on the moment of emergence of the sign as preliminary to that of mature language’s basic syntactic forms has made clear that what had appeared to me at the time a significant categorical distinction was in fact without interest. What was essential was to define the minimal requirements for the emergence of a sign that was consciously, or we might say, conscientiously produced, in the sense that the substitution of the sign for the original gesture of appropriation was of necessity an act of conscience, the deliberate renouncement of a “natural” gesture under the influence of a will in the service of the community, the original manifestation of the sacred.
This might be said to be the last question on peoples’ minds in our time of emergent conflict that has brought the world arguably to its most troubled state since the end of WWII. But without seeking historical parallels, it seems to me that it is precisely at such times that radically new ideas, precisely because they go all but unnoticed, are most “naturally” generated. The traditional rules of academic judgment having been suspended in all but the most strictly empirical fields, there is no longer any pressure to adhere to the clichés of the moment, which have become infested with popular resentments that seek power rather than understanding.
Although the focus of The Origin of Language was the emergence of the syntactic structures of fundamental utterance-forms, from the elementary ostensive to the declarative sentence, from which emerges a notion of truth-value, in retrospect, the most important element introduced into what would become human culture was not the sign itself and its future evolution, but rather the scene of representation on which it appeared, or rather which the sign simultaneously evoked. In pointing to the producer(s) of the first sign, one would do the same for the scene on which the sign brought together the participants of this first “conversation.”
The scene is the implicit backdrop of all cultural communication. This means, as is still not generally recognized, that not only do animals not have signs in the semiotic sense, but above all, they do not have scenes. I have made this point many times, and note that in most cases this appears as a new idea for my audience, although it is just as obvious that the scene of communication/representation is a purely human configuration as that the sign itself is a purely human creation. The newness of this idea, however obvious in retrospect, is brought home by an example I have previously cited: Frisch’s famous bee-dance that informs other bees of the hive of the position of new sources of pollen is not communicated by the returning bee, as we tend to imagine it, in the center of a circle surrounded by an audience as in a theater, but through its physically transmitting a chemical signal to each of the several bees who needs to know the location of these sources.
It is curious in a different sense that Jean-Paul Sartre, the Western philosopher who can be said to have theorized the notion of the scene in his magnum opus L’Etre et le néant (1943), never thought to associate it with language, although he insisted on limiting it to the human. Indeed, the most striking revelation of the parallel discovered between Sartre’s néant and the “nothingness” referred to by Nishida and other Japanese-Buddhist philosophers is that in neither case was any connection made between the notion of “empty space” as constitutive of a “realm of freedom” and the scene of language, although a minimum of reflection makes obvious the relation between Sartre’s description of the pour-soi as the human mind characterized by this space and the nature of the scene on which humans exchange signs , whether visual or vocal. Why indeed would Sartre insist that the pour-soi applied only to humanity? Here we observe the limitations of metaphysics at the historical moment when it is about to be transcended; for Existentialism is at its root a critique of metaphysics, of the notion of Ideas as receptacles of truth.
But it is useless to seek to explain the defects in Sartre’s (or Nishida’s) notion of nothingness once we understand the fundamental source of this concept in the minimal ontology of the originary hypothesis. Nor is what is lacking simply the word/idea “scene.” The reason why Sartre never saw the relationship between human language and the pour-soi is that this term was translated from Hegel without seeking to penetrate beneath its quasi-logical terminology, which remains confined to the mind of the isolated individual. The for in the for-itself implies a whole different ontology from the “in” in the in-itself ( en-soi ); in the latter there is indeed no “self” at all, merely the potential referent of an “idea,” or more simply, a sign . The self with for attached is truly a self simply by that very fact, so that the soi / itself / sich is wholly different in the two cases, but no thought is given to its dependence on the protohuman community from which it emerges. It is here that metaphysics prolonged itself for another generation in the language of Existenzphilosophie .
Is this dependence an “exciting” idea? For the reader who takes it seriously it marks the birth of what I have called “a new way of thinking.” But the reader must first accept that no “authority” was needed to make this claim, only its reasonableness with respect to the facts of the human situation—the human scene . To situate this scene in the first place in the individual mind is a metaphysical gesture that even the following generation, that of Derrida, was unable to transcend. It is only once one understands the human as defined by the scene on which its representations are shared that a rational ontology of the human can be constructed , one which also allows for the sense of the sacred or conscience that accompanies the deferral of the act of possession, and makes it, or rather, allows it to become, a sign.
Only once this is accepted can we seek to explain why this self-evidence was so long deliberately ignored. Why even the theorizers of “joint shared attention” who pointed out that pointing in the human sense is not done by chimpanzees et al, why Derrida who spoke of différance as allowing for the differentiation of signs never realized that the first difference/deferral is not between sign a and sign b, but between the sign and the appropriative gesture that it forecloses.
Why were these questions not asked? The rule in philosophical discussions is to focus on logical consistency, while judging assertions in their own terms. It would not be proper, for example, to make the point I made above that Sartre’s néant is only understandable in anthropological terms as in the first place a space of communication where objects are represented rather than accessed directly. The real-world basis of the pour-soi “at a distance” from “its” object is the separation of the user of language from the object/being to which he refers , rather than, as with all prehuman animals, seeks to possess or to flee or even to observe. Sartre rightly intuits that an animal’s observation still belongs to the en-soi , the world without “free space,” because it is not a scene of representation, a mental “space” in which the object is not simply observed but contemplated as belonging to a human, and in principle communal, context.
To say such things today is not simply to criticize Sartre as would another philosopher; it is to impose on philosophy an anthropological context that its very essence denies, a context in which language is not a given but an invention of the human community in its effort to minimize the conflicts that at a certain point could no longer be resolved by animal reflexive mechanisms, thereby giving rise to the sense of sacred interdiction/conscience that obliged the proto-human to defer his individual attempts at appropriation to allow for the sharing of, e.g., a supply of food, among the members of the community.
None of these originary details were part of philosophical discourse as it first emerged in Greece in an attempt to understand the polis through the analysis of the Ideas that constitute its operative principles. The classical philosophers had no idea of biological evolution and could not have conceived of a historical moment of the origin of language as the origin of our species. The polis was the first self-conscious model of the human community, and the persistent relevance of classical philosophy depends upon the fact that it still remains an approximate model of a self-contained society today. But we cannot expect to find in the works of the philosophers a pre -philosophical understanding of language as the foundation of human society in the absence of an understanding of the emergence of our species from that of non-speaking animals.
Indeed, it is far from accidental that classical Greek philosophy, as opposed to the speculations of the pre-Socratics, begins precisely in the context of the scene of human representation, that is, as a series of dialogues in the agora. This is the real source of philosophy and its “Ideas,” not the “Cave” in which we see their shadows on the walls. Plato/Socrates seeks the origin of the human community via the conversations the agora permits, through which Socrates’ wisdom can presumably extract the “essence” of terms like courage or piety and convey these truths to his fellow Athenians. That he was forced to drink the hemlock creates a prima facie opposition between the world of everyday politics, with its imperfect grasp of the “Ideas” by which the polis should be ruled, and that of the political/philosophical ideal, which Socrates is depicted as embodying.
But this dialectical method is not that of empirical science in that it does not see the human itself as an object of inquiry whose emergence from the prehuman must be defined. Only after Darwin could we begin to reflect on the human in its minimal distinction from the prehuman, and this understanding would necessarily come into conflict with the philosophical tradition that had been based on the existence of “mature” humanity as its point of departure.
Which explains why Sartre could understand the pour-soi , which is so obviously based on the scene of human communication, as a metaphysical construct within the individual’s mind that guarantees his “freedom” independently of the human community. The idea that such a construct must exist in the real world and must therefore itself have an etiological history is altogether outside consideration.
Which tells us a great deal about why the era of metaphysics is coming to an end. Plato-Socrates’ agora was a reasonable empirical point of departure for human reflection on the human mind in the context of the polis ; but once abstracted from any notion of a human collectivity, the pour-soi is an artificial construct whose key element, the néant, is a mere abstraction that cannot be situated in a (pre-) history of the human scene, as it must in order to figure in a generative anthropology.
What this analysis implies is the necessity for a wholesale rereading of the Western philosophical tradition in the light of the originary hypothesis. Not that rival hypotheses need be excluded; but what is essential is that any such hypotheses take into account the real-world emergence of the human from the prehuman world through the discovery of the scene and the sign, or their equivalents.
**This Chronicle was written before the Trump assassination attempt that has left so many questions unanswered. Whatever the future of our troubled civilization, it is reassuring to know that at least these fundamental questions can finally be given reasonable answers.
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Chapter-by-Chapter Summary. Olive Smith is an applicant for Stanford's biology Ph.D program. After the interview with Dr. Aysegul Aslan, she ends up in a bathroom nearby unable to see and trying to wash out her eyes because she put in expired contacts. She meets "The Guy" there, who she assumes is a Ph.D student there.
The Love Hypothesis is a captivating and heartwarming romance that delves into the complexities of academia and love. The story revolves around Olive Smith, a dedicated PhD student, and Adam Carlsen, a charming and cocky professor. Both characters are beautifully crafted with depth and vulnerability, making them relatable and endearing to ...
BONUS SCENE. Not ready to say goodbye to Olive and Adam? Simply sign up for Ali Hazelwood's email newsletter and get exclusive access to an Adam POV chapter! Want more Adam & Olive? Get access to The Love Hypothesis Bonus Chapter by Ali Hazelwood.
Chapter 16 Summary. Adam rips his shirt off and pulls Olive to him, kissing her and running his hands over her body. The touches spark a range of sensations Olive's never felt before, making her squirm. Adam tries to slide one finger inside her, but her tightness makes it difficult. She admits to having sex only a few times in college, which ...
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood (2021) follows a female scientist's comedic journey to true love that's fraught with lies, tears, and awkward moments. The book was an instant NY Times bestseller, a BuzzFeed Best Summer Read of 2021, and Goodreads Choice Awards finalist. Born in Italy, Ali Hazelwood moved to the United States via Japan and Germany to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience.
The Love Hypothesis is another one of those debut novels that completely blew me away. Hazelwood is an immensely talented author. Her background as a neuroscientist laid a phenomenal foundation for this story. You could really tell that she had experience in the setting she chose, which lent an authenticity to the story that I think is actually ...
Here's why "The Love Hypothesis" is one of my favorite recent romance books: 1. The story focuses a lot on Olive and Adam's lives outside their romance, making their love story more believable and ...
The Love Hypothesis is a romance novel by Ali Hazelwood, published September 14, 2021 by Berkley Books.Originally published online in 2018 as Head Over Feet, a Star Wars fan fiction work about the "Reylo" ship between Rey and Kylo Ren, the novel follows a Ph.D. candidate and a professor at Stanford University who pretend to be in a relationship.
An Indie Next Pick! "A literary breakthrough… The Love Hypothesis is a self-assured debut, and we hypothesize it's just the first bit of greatness we'll see from an author who somehow has the audacity to be both an academic powerhouse and divinely talented novelist."— Entertainment Weekly " C ontemporary romance's unicorn: the elusive marriage of deeply brainy and delightfully escapist...
The Love Hypothesis is an open-door romance and has one quite smutty scene, but what I really appreciated about the scene was the way it tackled Olive's demisexuality… and the fact that it was kind of awkward - because sex is sometimes just really awkward and not at all like what's described in romance novels!
The Love Hypothesis. (2021) (The first book in the Love Hypothesis series) A novel by Ali Hazelwood. Buy from Amazon. Search. Hardcover. Feb 1, 2022. from: $37.95.
The Love Hypothesis has wild commercial appeal, but the quieter secret is that there is a specific audience, made up of all of the Olives in the world, who have deeply, ardently waited for this exact book." —New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren "Funny, sexy, and smart. Ali Hazelwood did a terrific job with The Love ...
Synopsis. In The Love Hypothesis, Olive is a third-year biology Ph.D. candidate who shares a kiss with a handsome stranger in order make her friend think that she's in a relationship. She's horrified when she realizes the "stranger" is Dr. Adam Carlson, a prominent professor in her department who is known for being a hypercritical and moody tyrant.
In The Love Hypothesis, there's really just one major sex scene, but it is very explicit. Because it was limited to one encounter, I didn't feel that it took over the book or overwhelmed the reading experience — but still, if you prefer these kind of scenes to be off-screen or fuzzy, just be aware in advance that the sex in The Love ...
r/RomanceBooks is a discussion sub for readers of romance novels. Home of the magic search button and endless book recommendations as well as discussions about tropes and characters, Author AMAs, book clubs, and more. Happy Endings guaranteed. I can't stop thinking about The Love Hypothesis. This book was sooooooo cute.
Chapter 20 Summary. Olive goes to the restaurant where Harvard's biology department took Adam for dinner. She plans to surreptitiously get Adam's attention and motion for him to check his phone before leaving, but he sees her immediately and leaves his dinner meeting to talk to her. Tom interrupts them, and Adam orders him to leave, his ...
The Love Hypothesis has some funny banter, especially with colorful supporting characters. Readers who enjoy very familiar romcom tropes will feel at home here, because this story is chock-full of them. The one explicit sex scene is easy to skip for those who aren't interested.
The spicy scene in The Love Hypothesis stands out due to Ali Hazelwood's excellent writing skills. Her ability to capture the characters' emotions and the intense chemistry between them makes the scene incredibly memorable and captivating. 7. Is The Love Hypothesis suitable for all readers? The Love Hypothesis is a romance novel intended ...
ADMIN MOD. I read The Love Hypothesis last week and need to gush. Gush/Rave 😍. So. I read The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood and I loved it. The story line is rather predictable but it's not horrible nor a deal breaker for me because Ali Hazelwood's writing made it a non issue for me. I thought the characters were super cute and was ...
The day before I was set to chat with Ali Hazelwood, the news broke that her debut novel The Love Hypothesis had officially become a New York Times bestseller, charting at #9 in print and at #11 ...
The Love Hypothesis has wild commercial appeal, but the quieter secret is that there is a specific audience, made up of all of the Olives in the world, who have deeply, ardently waited for this exact book." —New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren ... "Not really my scene." ...
The Instant New York Times Bestseller and TikTok Sensation! As seen on THE VIEW! A BuzzFeed Best Summer Read of 2021. When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated theories on love into chaos. As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in ...
Sleepless In Seattle features several heartwarming romantic moments, but the Empire State Building scene is one of its best. In the scene, Annie is at the top of the Empire State Building staring out at New York when Jonah and Sam walk in. The moment they look into each other's eyes, they just know they are meant for each other.This iconic romance scene is made even better by a musical score ...
Get unlimited access to SuperSummaryfor only $0.70/week. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of "The Love Hypothesis" by Ali Hazelwood. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Although the focus of The Origin of Language was the emergence of the syntactic structures of fundamental utterance-forms, from the elementary ostensive to the declarative sentence, from which emerges a notion of truth-value, in retrospect, the most important element introduced into what would become human culture was not the sign itself and its future evolution, but rather the scene of ...