I just finished reading The Love Hypothesis today and it was a quick and enjoyable read - enjoyed the fake dating trope, and the brooding, egotistical, but smart with a heart of gold love interest. He's got a Mr. Darcy-like ambiance around him - hot, smart, misunderstood. And she's a bit of a mess, but in a sweet and whip smart kind of way. It doesn't require a tonne of suspension of disbelief. 

I enjoyed how the main "conflict"

wasn't between the love interests, but within the protagonist and also within a believable scenario with an outside force,

that part was really well executed. 
I did not like the

unsafe sex between Adam and Olive and the sort of line about "being clean" and being on birth control, etc. It just seemed a bit hard to believe in this day and age to be both a scientist and so cavalier about something like that.

 

I just couldn’t care about any of what was going on in the book, and I found the teacher student behaviour to be weird.

Decided to get my dopamine hit from a better book. 

I read this book back in 2019, and I generally enjoyed it. I thought it was clever  - and viewing it through the lens of still going through a pandemic, it's even more prescient on some of the less awesome human inclinations during a pandemic (but also some of the good ones.)

I thought the different points of view were great interms of building the story to it's eventual outcome. It was a book I could get lost in, the characters were all interesting, flawed, but interesting, the premise was fascinating. 

minor spoiler ahead, and some of my least favourite parts of the book:

But I've realized that even two years later, every time I think of this otherwise decent enough book, I'm still reminded of the gratuitous rape scene, 3/4 of the way through the book. It was just so unnecessary, we'd already established very well that Stoover was a "bad guy," it wasn't subtle, but it's just tacked on there as additional evidence. And Wendig even wrote about how gross gratuitous rape scenes were (in reference to game of thrones, but still - he knows it's gross.)

I generally enjoyed this book, but it wasn't entirely for me. 

I especially enjoyed the first half of build up and character development of Manny, a successful business owner, and CEO. I thought it started out strong, I loved Manny's solid friendships, and the build up towards the mediocre fiancé. I wasn't entirely sold on the love story part of things, nor with a few of the moments of conflict that occur in the book. The ones I'm thinking about just seemed to be tacked on for some reason, and I didn't connect with them or their resolutions. 

I generally prefer romance novels  where I get to see the other side of the story, or some insight into the other lead characters internal development which I didn't see here with Sammy. I enjoyed the premise of the book - reconnecting with roots and discovering oneself a lot, I would have happily read this book without any of the romantic elements. I got the impression that Sammy was ultimately a good person - but I don't feel we get to know him well enough to know why Manny was in love with him. 

In my opinion most romance novels require some kind of suspension of disbelief, there are definitely some romantic tropes in this book, which I actually enjoyed, but if that's not for you - be advised they are there.

I left feeling sort of conflicted about the book, but overall enjoyed reading it. There were a lot of great moments of humour and I loved the friendships and self discovery. Thank you to netgalley for the ARC.

I read this book to get to the end, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. It captured my curiosity in the beginning but eventually  it felt like a bit of a dreary slog but I wanted to know how it ended.