Published September 2021
Paperback Sphere
354 pages
Grade 3/5
Genre: romance
Key words: friends; scientific research, university world, woman in science in a man’s world, imposter syndrome, lawlessness of academia, California, USA.
How far could you go to help a friend?
Olive is a biology PhD student at Stanford University on a full scholarship, that means she is exceptionally good. She has a specific question for research which she is afraid nobody else with discover.
Her mother died when she was young, she never knew her father. Since she entered the PhD program her best friend is Anh, they are they only women among hundreds of men; Olive feels Anh is her only family. Anh is very outspoken, active dynamic the opposite of Olive. They live together with homosexual Malcolm, all three are PhD students. They are poor and try to get to as many university events where they serve free food.
Olive’s supervisor is dr. Aslan, a woman who will retire next year so she does not get grants, therefore the lab is short on everything. Olive has a very free hand to do her research.
Olive has no time for boyfriends and dating, as she is always busy with her research, at the age of 26 years she has been on less than 5 dates, a few dates with Jeremy, another Ph student. Anh falls in love with Jeremy but Anh will not date him as she believes Olive is still in love with him, which she is not. In order to persuade Anh that she is dating somebody else, one evening Ollive grabs a man and kisses him for Anh to see.
That man was dr. Adam Carlsen, the academic rock star of the department, young, mean, hypercritical and destroyer of research careers. All the students avoid him although he sits on the committee that approves research proposals and he is tough.
After the kissing he threaten her with an assault complaint and of sexual misconduct to the university, only then she reluctantly agrees to tell him why she kissed him.
By various complications Adam suggests they keep up ‘fake-dating’, so the university will believe that he will stay and release funding for his research.
It is an easy and fun read. I think it gives a good description of what the author (a professor herself) calls it “the lawless land of academia”. The belittlement of women in a man’s world, sexual harassment, stealing ideas and methods and data. The point of a university research program is “to educate outstanding researchers and prevent useless or even harmful crab”. That is a bottom line I support.
But fake-dating is not what intelligent people would do, miscommunications, the characters are good at research (cold data and facts) but not in reading each other emotionally. I liked the handling of sexual misconduct and that it is possible today to do something about it, that is why I give 3/5 stars.
On the Author:
Ali (Lisa) Hazelwood (b. 1990) was born in Italy and did her PhD in neuroscience in USA, where she met her husband and where she lives today. Today she is a professor.
The Love Hypothesis is her first book, it was listed as The New York Times bestseller.
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