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Ahhh the book that EVERYONE on TikTok is reading, posting about and recommending. If you’re on TikTok, you would no doubt have seen this book circulating. Even the copy I own has a little sticker on the front saying ‘TikTok made me buy it’. So as I was in the mood for a cheesy, feel-good, saucy rom-com, I knew it was the time to see what all the hype surrounding this book was about!
SYNOPSIS: 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. 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.
REVIEW: I definitely found this book to be an incredibly easy read and by only a few pages, I was hooked on the story and could easily envisage each character so vividly. I did find that the chapters were chunky but the story moved at such a great pace that I found myself racing through the chapters without any hesitation.
As I was reading the story, I tried to stop myself from thinking too much about the story and to just enjoy the experience. Yet I couldn’t stop myself from thinking as the story went on how I felt about our narrator and main character, Olive Smith. Did I like her? I don’t know - she was simple in many ways but I also felt sorry for her in her quest to find funding for her research project. And it was this part of the story which I found the most intriguing - how the author Ali Hazelwood centres around women in STEM and academia. I suppose the majority of readers don’t really know about this sector of the community unless you’re directly involved in STEM research so I would have liked Ali Hazelwood to put in a little bit more detail about Olive’s research which would have made the STEM story a little bit more intriguing!
I did however, find the love interest, Adam, to be so wholesome and loving. I much preferred his character to any of the other characters in the book, even with his ‘moody’ and ‘mean’ demeanour. It was so clear that he really loved and cared for Olive and I found him to be the perfect gentleman. It took over 200 pages to get to the saucy scenes which, c’mon, we were all getting excited about and it was everything I needed from the two characters.
Overall, the writing and the story is cheesy and predictable but if you’re looking for an easy, feel-good, rom-com, then look no further!
READ THIS IF:
🧪 You want an easy, feel-good read
🧪 You want a book with a strong, intelligent woman protagonist
🧪 You in need of a cheesy rom-com
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