Books › Love Theoretically
Love Theoretically
400 pages
A sharp, swoony exploration of what happens when a chronic people-pleaser finally collides with someone who demands her unvarnished truth.
What it feels like
Reading this romance feels like stepping into a fiercely intelligent, banter-filled debate that slowly melts into a deeply comforting embrace. The narrative moves at a brisk, highly engaging clip, propelled by snappy dialogue and the protagonist's wry, self-deprecating internal monologue. Beneath the playful, intellectually charged atmosphere of academic rivalries and fake-dating hijinks lies a tender exploration of burnout and the exhausting weight of chronic people-pleasing. The mood is warm and swoony, balancing the sharp edges of institutional sexism with the soft, hard-won vulnerability of letting your guard down. It is an absolute delight for anyone who loves watching a hyper-competent, emotionally guarded woman realize that the safest place to land is with someone who sees right through her carefully constructed masks.
- Mood
- swoony
- intellectually charged
- warm
- playful
- Tone
- witty
- self-deprecating
- earnest
- smart
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the exhaustion of people-pleasing · academic burnout · unmasking your true self · women in STEM · rivalry to romance
- The writing
- Snappy and dialogue-forward, the writing is heavily flavored with clever scientific metaphors and a sharp, highly relatable internal monologue.
- The arc
- The protagonist journeys from hiding behind carefully constructed, people-pleasing personas to experiencing the terrifying liberation of being entirely, unapologetically known.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave witty, banter-heavy romances featuring hyper-competent but emotionally messy heroines navigating the cutthroat world of academia.
Content notes
- academic toxicity
- sexism in the workplace
- chronic illness (type 1 diabetes)
About the book
The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.
Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, right between Elsie and her dream job.
Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but...those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?
Description from Open Library.
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