Love, Theoretically

Love, Theoretically is a 2023 novel by best-selling novelist and neuroscientist Ali Hazelwood. A romantic comedy about love, lies, and standing up for oneself, Love, Theoretically centers on Elsie Hannaway, a theoretical physicist and chronic people-pleaser. Within the novel, Elsie navigates the difficulties of being a woman in academia and falls for the rival physicist who nearly destroyed her field. By employing many of the classic tropes of contemporary romance, Hazelwood explores the human need for love and acceptance along with themes of self-worth, revenge, and performance. The novel, along with many of Hazelwood's other works, is a popular BookTok read.

This study guide refers to the Berkley e-book edition of the text.

Content Warning: This text features recurring discussions of institutionalized sexism.

Plot Summary

Elsie is an overworked and underappreciated adjunct professor at three Boston universities who loves theoretical physics but dislikes teaching. To cover her medical expenses and to make up for the poor compensation she receives as an adjunct, Elsie works for an app called Faux that allows users to hire people to pretend to be their girlfriends. Greg Smith has been a client of Elsie’s for some time, and she considers them to be friends, but she feels antagonized by Greg’s older brother, Jack, who believes she is lying to Greg about who she really is.

At the beginning of the novel, Elsie is interviewing for a tenure-track professorship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) but is warned about the politics between theoretical and experimental physicists in the department. One of the experimental physicists is Jonathan Smith-Turner, a man who once wrote a hoax article that discredited theorists and got Elsie’s mentor, Christophe Laurendeau, fired from his role as an editor. Jonathan has proposed a candidate for the position named George, another experimental physicist. When Elsie meets the members of the MIT physics department, she is surprised to learn that Jonathan Smith-Turner is actually Jack Smith, her client Greg’s judgmental older brother.

Jack is convinced that Elsie is lying about her qualifications for the job just as he thinks she lied to Greg, who is unreachable throughout the week of Elsie’s interview due to a work retreat. Elsie's dislike of both Jack Smith and Jonathan Smith-Turner makes her want the job even more and, throughout her interview process, she does everything she can to make him miserable. Despite her efforts, Elsie learns that George—who turns out to be another woman in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math)—got the job. Jack tells her that many members of the department did not want the professor who promoted Elsie’s application to do so, as the position was essentially created and intended for George.

Elsie is distraught about returning to adjunct teaching but recognizes that George deserved the job. She begins to trust Jack, who has learned through his brother that he and Elsie were only pretending to date in order to placate his obsessive mother and conceal the secret that Greg is aromantic and has no interest in dating anyone. Once he recognizes that Greg and Elsie were never actually together, Jack confesses that he has always had feelings for her and that he only seemed to hate her because he was both protective and jealous of Greg. He offers Elsie a postdoctoral research fellowship after she is officially rejected by MIT, which she refuses. Jack also asks Elsie on a date, which she also refuses at first but feels compelled to accept once she learns that Jack’s mother was a theoretical physicist and that his article might not have been intentionally written to prove the superiority of experimental physics.

Jack is one of the few people who notice Elsie’s tendency to change her personality based on the people she is interacting with, a tactic that she hopes will help her prove herself to others and feel loved. To do this, Elsie has become an expert at reading people and learning exactly what they want from her, yet Jack is the only person she does not understand, as he does not want any other Elsie than the one she truly is. Her self-confidence grows throughout the novel as she learns to be honest with Jack.

Elsie begins to fall for Jack but does not feel worthy of him and is still uncertain about his feelings toward theoretical physicists, like herself, as he avoids discussion of his infamous article. Just when she is starting to believe that she and Jack can have a future together, Elsie brings up the article and the effects it has had on her and her field. Jack admits that he wrote the article for revenge against Laurendeau, Elsie’s advisor, who had been the reason that his mother was shunned from academia after he was born. When Laurendeau tells Elsie that she cannot accept a dream job offered to her by George, she realizes that, like Jack, Laurendeau has concealed information from her and made decisions on her behalf about what she is capable of.

While giving Elsie space, Jack writes and publishes another article apologizing for his previous one and how he did not do anything afterward to suggest that he didn’t believe theoretical physics was inferior to experimental physics. Elsie and Jack forgive each other and the lies they have told one another, and Elsie accepts the job George has offered her at MIT. Toward the end of the novel, Elsie becomes much better at setting boundaries with those around her and telling the truth, dismantling her instinct to people-please.