The Love Hypothesis

When a desperate kiss with a notoriously grumpy professor lands Olive Smith in the most unexpected fake dating situation, she thinks she can keep her feelings as controlled as her lab experiments—except Adam Carlsen keeps surprising her at every turn. Between defending her career at a chaotic science conference and discovering that the "lab tyrant" everyone warned her about is actually thoughtful, supportive, and impossibly attractive, Olive's carefully constructed walls around her heart start cracking. What begins as a strategic lie to convince her best friend that she's in a real relationship spirals into something neither of them saw coming, forcing Olive to confront the one variable she never accounted for: genuine, overwhelming connection. It's a delightful romp through academia and romance that proves sometimes the best discoveries happen when you stop calculating the odds and just let yourself fall.