Antonia Bernardin

Love on the brain by Ali Hazelwood was the 43rd book I read this year and the last one in the little romance kick I’ve been on lately while I was on holiday.

A terrible attempt at summarising

Bee’s career in neuroscience has stagnated, until she gets the opportunity of a lift time, working for NASA to develop a helmet designed to optimise an astronaut’s ability to concentrate. Only, she arrives to discover the guy from her grad school lab, who absolutely hated her back then, will be running the lab in partnership with her. Bee has hope when Levi seems different to how he was in school, more personable, well liked by his colleagues and he is mostly civil with her. Until her lab equipment does not arrive and he reprimands her for not dressing professionally. Furious, Bee finally chews him out and threatens to go to the department head, despite Levi’s insistence that it won’t be a good idea. Somehow, Levi beats her to the supervisors office and Bee is about to barge in and say her piece when she realises Levi is defending her and demanding her lab equipment. From there, they strike an un-easy truce, until the day Bee get stuck in a graveyard after dark and only has Levi to call for rescue. She is forced to stay over night at his place and it’s then Bee realises she may have misunderstood a lot about Levi.

All the while Bee is posting on her steminist twitter account and messaging with a fellow women in stem supporter. They anonymously talk about their professional frustrations… such as the lab co-lead whose being a massive camel dick, and the women that the other account is love with who recently joined his team but he believes she’s married and hates him so he can’t act on his feelings.

What did I think?

You know what? I might even prefer this book the most out of three Ali Hazelwood books I’ve read. Bee is just… cool, in a nerdy kind of way. Her character has some real depth, between the facts about famous women scientists sprinkled throughout her narration, her quirky internal monologue and the way she always blurts out what she’s thinking, she felt very real. I loved the little extra details like her demonic little gen z lab assistant and Levi’s extra interests outside of work. The whole messaging each other over twitter about one another thing is a little contrived but I don’t think it took away from the narrative. Also, there was no incredibly predictable third act misunderstanding this time, which was refreshing.

So for a fluffy romance, I actually got a whole bit of plot that I actually enjoyed!

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