I really, really loved this dual perspective, friends to lovers romance featuring two PhD students who fake date for the sake of science and find themselves falling in love. The friendship, the banter, the STEAM! Everything just worked so well for me in this book. I also loved that Lyric was a woman in STEM researching the romantic chemistry between partners. Great on audio with two narrators, Abhay Ahluwalia and Brittany Pressley (one of my all time fav voices for young women)! Highly recommended for fans of Helen Hoang, Ali Hazelwood and Susannah Nix. Much thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my advance review copies!!

Focuses more on the STEM part of romance. Reminds me of the love hypothesis and the kiss quotient. Speedy read.

I really enjoy a character who thinks in a scientific brain rather than a romantic one.
I liked the side characters more than the main characters, though.

3.5/5

This being marketed as The Kiss Quotient meets Love Potion No. 9 and I have to say, that’s a pretty dang accurate mash up in terms of describing this book. The author used a couple of different tropes in her last book and she does it again here too, and does it pretty well might I add. You have friends to lovers with a side of fake dating and fake dating is one of my faves so I was happy to see it here. Despite Lyric being a woman in STEM, which I love and always find interesting, she isn’t portrayed as the best scientist around. She’s talked about as being super smart but her actions (both romantically and having to do with her research) don’t really match up to what was being said about who she is. It didn’t bother me too much, just something I found odd and wanted to mention. My overall experience here was good, I have to give credit to the audio narrators performances because I truly enjoyed listening to both Brittany Pressley and Abhay Ahulwalia and felt like they elevated things for me.

This book had a little bit of it all. It was a cute lighthearted fast paced story but nothing special. I feel like it was trying to hard to check all the boxes.