After being totally smitten with the film adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s debut novel, The Love Hypothesis, a few weeks ago, I jumped on the wait list at my local library the very next day. One vacation later and I’ve finally finished it!
There were plenty of similarities between the two, but I can see where some fans of the book would have been disappointed in the adaptation. Since I followed my usual rule of watching before reading, I was disappointed by neither! In fairness, I didn’t know this was a book, nor do I usually seek out romance novels. I will give the film credit, I think it came across more comical than the book did, which I appreciated. A pretty stark difference came with the cover art. I think Lili Reinhart looks the exact opposite of how Olive was described in the book, but at her core she’s petite and feminine, so I didn’t really have a problem with it. I think the differences between Tom Bateman and Adam were less obvious, so I’m sure people had less of a problem with it.
Olive first meets Adam with blind luck. The day of her interview at Stanford she finds herself fighting some old contacts in a lab bathroom. Adam is blunt, but ultimately kind in his advice to her on going forward with her grad school interview. Cut to many years later and Olive is thriving at Stanford, having reached a critical point in her reserch on pancreatic cancer. While she finds herself more focused on school and her research, she decides that she also needs to do her best friend, Ahn, a solid and make it known that she has no more feelings for her crush, Jeremy. She is successful in a shocking way when she randomly kisses Adam in the hallway as a show for Ahn.
Mortified, Olive tries to act like nothing ever happend, but Adam decides to take this momentum and run with it. He suggests that they fake date as it will be a mutually beneficial arrangement for the two of them. For Olive, it will help her help Ahn’s future relationship with Jeremy, and it will help Adam get access to frozen research funds. Evidently Satnford believes Adam to be a flight risk since it seems like he has no roots. This would be cool if almost the entire school didn’t fear Adam and his no-nonsense approach to teaching. I too would have probably found Adam intimidating and mean, but as the book goes on it’s clear he means well. He wants to create great scientists, which is necessary in the world.
As is the trope, of course the fake dating blows up in their faces. Only getting Olive’s perspective means she has no clue Adam feels the same way, though she is painfully oblivious at times. Both struggle with social awkwardness, so it’s also no surprise that they both missed the signs. For novels like this, I guess I’m used to the YA versions, so the not so PG scenes always make me blush a bit, but I liked how the author addressed a lot of sexual concerns, as well as what attraction can look like for different people. All in all, this was an very good romance novel and has me wanting to watch the movie again ASAP.