The Love Hypothesis
Ali Hazelwood
♥ Hypothesis Although not that experienced with reading romance novels, I might like one if it started out as Star Wars fan fiction.
I want to start this review by saying, ‘I don’t really read romance novels,’ but then I look back at my 2023 reads and I go, ‘oh.’ Add that to the fact that I have owned The Love Hypothesis since 2022…. So obviously, since then, I had been planning on reading romance (without the hook of vampires, werewolves, time travel, and Jack The Ripper). So yes, 2024 became the year of me finally reading The Love Hypothesis, although it was in the form of an audiobook I borrowed from the library. Bless the library for enabling what is turning into my habit of listening to romance audiobooks.
I hang out at the edges of a lot of online spaces, so it did not escape me that the book was fan fiction to start (Star Wars Rey/Kylo Ren in its original form). Stating the obvious and presumably already stated but I feel like the cover reflects its origin. It is probably not fair to the author, but I did spend time reading the book going, ‘So which Star Wars character is this?’ I was not able to make any direct parallels because the character that made me go, ‘Oh, it is Luke,’ was very much not Luke.
(Sidebar: any discussion of Adam the main male character’s abbs did make me think of the SNL sketch where Kylo Ren went on Undercover Boss and there was the whole Kylo Ren has an eight-pack joke.)
So that was a me issue but sometimes it took me out of the book. Also, while I have been dipping my toe into the non-supernatural elements romance novels, the big takeaway I had from this book is that maybe it was not …quite for me. And that is okay! Because it is a perfectly serviceable book. I recognized that it was cute, funny, and at times hot. It just lacked …intergalactic civil war? And I want to be clear the book does not promise that the book is very clear about what it is going to be. This is a me thing.
I think the thing that irked me the most, is sometimes it felt like the Very Smart characters were being Very Dumb. And sometimes I could excuse it (a bad thing happens, the character is very startled and upset, and misses something that seems obvious to me) but other times I was like wow, this level of obliviousness is blatantly serving the plot. But then I had to take a step back and say am I being harsh because I don’t have like – something magical to distract me? Or maybe something I could relate to that would distract me?
Science and academia are a thing in this book. My non-knowledge didn’t feel like it held me back, and I can’t speak to the accuracy of it all. But for me, the science was just – there. It didn’t add any flavor to the book, but again I think that was because I’m not that interested in science.
In short, I’d give the book 3.75 stars, so round it up to four! It felt like a solid novel, it kept me distracted on some very cold early January dog walks, so it did its job. I think I wasn’t the audience for it.
Side note that relates to this audiobook specifically. The version I listened to had a bonus chapter from Adam’s POV. This was read by a second (male) narrator and I thought that was a neat touch. I have no issues with one audiobook narrator doing the whole book but I enjoyed the POV switch that came with a narrator switch.
(Crossposted to my dreamwidth site here: https://dreadpiratekel.dreamwidth.org/2381.html)