Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

Themes: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

The synopsis

Bee Königswasser lives by a simple code: What would Marie Curie do? If NASA offered her the lead on a neuroengineering project – a literal dream come true – Marie would accept without hesitation. Duh. But the mother of modern physics never had to co-lead with Levi Ward.

Sure, Levi is attractive in a tall, dark, and piercing-eyes kind of way. But Levi made his feelings toward Bee very clear in grad school – archenemies work best employed in their own galaxies far, far away.

But when her equipment starts to go missing and the staff ignore her, Bee could swear she sees Levi softening into an ally, backing her plays, seconding her ideas… devouring her with those eyes. The possibilities have all her neurons firing.

But when it comes time to actually make a move and put her heart on the line, there’s only one question that matters: What will Bee Königswasser do?

The review

I loved The Love Hypothesis so I was a bit disappointed with this one. As usual with Ali Hazelwood, this is a romance with a woman (Bee) working in science (she’s a neuroscientist). The rest of the book felt as predictable as this, even though I usually don’t really mind it when I’m reading romance. But here I felt I was reading The Love Hypothesis with characters that had been renamed and a change of scenery. And this feeling of déjà-vu was especially present during the smutty scenes, which were simply a copy-paste from Ali’s first book.

I still enjoyed the story, and the side characters, and I think the underlying themes of gender-based discrimination/sexism (in science or not) are important to be addressed. I also really liked the all-Twitter account part, even though it was quite anecdotal in the story while it could have been developed further to really add something to the story.

In brief: Even though this was a nice read, it was disappointing after The Love Hypothesis. There are still some positive points (fortunately!) but it was too much like Ali’s other books, with characters which really felt like paper beings and almost a lack of chemistry between the main couple.

My rating: 3.5/5

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