Liar, Liar, Grants on Fire: Love, Academia Style

Ali Hazelwood's latest, Love, Theoretically was even better than I expected.  Once again, Hazelwood gives us a genius-yet-down-to-earth heroine who has only one foe more formidable than big, bad academia: herself.  This time her name is Dr. Elsie Hannaway, and she's a theoretical physicist with a concentration in crystals.  She also has type I diabetes and an uncontrollable habit of lying.  It's not that she's a bad person.  To the contrary, Elsie wants everyone to like her so much that she chameleons into the versions of herself she thinks they want to see.  It's an exhausting existence made even more so by her low-paying, no-benefits job as an adjunct professor -- and her side hustle of fake dating.  You read what you read.  Elsie pretends to be dudes' girlfriends for money.  But before you get it twisted, she's not that kind of escort, something she makes crystal clear when a lowlife client offers her seventy dollars to go above and beyond a dinner appearance.  So she's at the end of her rope when she discovers that the guy who can give her her dream job at MIT is none other than one of her fake bf's brothers and the guy who discredited her profession with one righteously indignant article.  

Ah, experimental physicist John Smith.  Because, yes, that's his name.  Or, as he prefers, Dr. Jack Turner-Smith.  Now, I have no understanding of physics whatsoever, but Hazelwood explains the theoretical-vs.-experimental rivalry in such simple and entertaining terms that I didn't miss a particle.  To that end, Jack may just be the most Hazelwood of Hazelwood heroes yet, calculatingly cockblocking Elsie's career only to end up being the key to unlock her best self.  The thing about Jack is that he doesn't like lying.  So he challenges Elsie to stop doing it, promising her that she'll be happier once she starts putting herself first.  It's a tricky trope, this alpha-male-means-to-an-end of unparalleled compassion.  Especially when Elsie discovers that Jack's been telling a pretty big whopper himself.  But as always, Hazelwood gets the formula just right one witty one-liner at a time, showing the world that the strong, silent type can also be strong and sensitive.   

Bonus of bonuses, Love, Theoretically includes a cameo from The Love Hypothesis's Olive and Adam as well as two references to Love on the Brain's Bee.  STEM academia really is a small world.  

And a surprisingly romantic one.