Love on the Brain

- Ali Hazelwood

GOODREADS BOOK BLURB:

Bee Königswasser lives by a simple code: What would Marie Curie do? If NASA offered her the lead on a neuroengineering project – a literal dream come true – Marie would accept without hesitation. Duh. But the mother of modern physics never had to co-lead with Levi Ward.

Sure, Levi is attractive in a tall, dark, and piercing-eyes kind of way. But Levi made his feelings toward Bee very clear in grad school – archenemies work best employed in their own galaxies far, far away.

But when her equipment starts to go missing and the staff ignore her, Bee could swear she sees Levi softening into an ally, backing her plays, seconding her ideas… devouring her with those eyes. The possibilities have all her neurons firing.

But when it comes time to actually make a move and put her heart on the line, there’s only one question that matters: What will Bee Königswasser do?

GENRES:

FIRST WORDS:

Here’s my favorite piece of trivia in the whole world: Dr. Marie Sklodowska-Curie showed up to her wedding ceremony wearing her lab gown.

MY REVIEW:

almost perfect:
4.5/5
Hazelwood struck the perfect balance between romance and STEM in Love on the Brain.

Bee and Levi were very easy characters to fall for. In The Love Hypothesis, I was annoyed at Olive for being so oblivious to Adam’s feelings, and Bee may have had a little of this as well, but her inability to accept what was right in front of her made a lot more sense. Not only had she been told by someone she trusted that he didn’t like her, but everyone around her assumed the same thing. Even when she finally starts questioning this, she’s pretty motivated to avoid the obvious conclusion to protect herself and keep up her walls. Thankfully, Levi is pretty good at being patient. Honestly, the only thing I probably didn’t like about them was their names.

I really loved Rocío. She is probably the best side character I’ve read in a long time. From her perfect commentary on ghosts and gore and splatterpunk, all delivered with absolutely no sense of irony, to her own love story, I was always happy for her to show up.

The GRE and Twitter stuff felt a little out of left field.
I get that Twitter was apparently necessary for Bee to accept how Levi felt about her, but we had more than enough evidence from their history and their time working together that she shouldn’t have needed more than that.
I suppose it helped Rocío in her side plot, and it is definitely a concern that needs to be addressed more openly, but it didn’t flow as well within the rest of what was going on. I guess you could say the same about the fainting thing – being vegan, crying over roadkill, and needing to be rescued several times would have probably been enough ‘damsel in distress’ for me.

I found the research and everything about NIH and NASA to be just as compelling as what was happening between Bee and Levi. Love on the Brain felt well rounded and interesting. The spice level was excellent (very present and descriptive but not overwhelming or repetitive), the characters were unique but believable, the commentary on sexism in STEM was well addressed, and the peppering of Marie Curie facts throughout the entire book was the cherry on top of a very enjoyable sundae.

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