This book was a really fun time and I liked it a lot, but I did feel there were a couple of things that didn’t fully work, so no five stars on this one. While Ali (we have met so I can call her Ali) is so good at dialogue and at characters, and character interaction, there were a couple of tropes and individual incidents that happened that made me stop reading and think to myself, really? But they didn’t hurt the overall story for me. It feels like she is learning how to write novels now that aren’t based on fanfic, and I’m totally willing to go with her on that journey and give her my money, because she gives me swoons and laughs in return.
This one is about Bee, a neuroscientist who specializes in brain stimulation, and Levi, an engineer. The two were rivals in graduate school, and now both are co-leads on a joint NASA/NIH project designed to improve cognition and response times in astronauts. I just love that that is a plot in an actual romance novel, and give me all the women in STEM romances please, and don’t skimp on the science! All the chapters are named after areas of the brain (I think) and yes I Googled most of them. Levi and Bee’s jobs are a large part of the story, and I absolutely loved all of it.
It did jar me a little that this was in first person POV, when I prefer third person, but I got used to it. And there were SO MANY tropes in this thing, just everything but the kitchen sink. She makes it work, but for me, it did wobble a bit on the way. The Marie Curie hero-worship framing device worked really well (although I could see people being annoyed by it). But the important part is that Levi and Bee are fully rounded characters who are fun to read about, and who have extremely compelling chemistry together, and there are multiple cats in this.
Bonus points for the lovely and odd f/f romance subplot, which I won’t spoil, but was one of my favorite parts of the book.