Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced review copy in exchange for my honest opinion. 

The Unbalanced Equation was such an enjoyable read. A four-star read that includes,
-STEM Romance
-Hate to love'
- Workplace romance
- Forced proximity 

Elizabeth Maclean and Dr. Thomas Henderson have an undeniable chemistry which they both pent down for four years when he becomes her PhD assessor. As she is about to leave the scrutiny of Tom his lab has burned down and now has to work alongside Liz on the same bench no less. To make matters worse they learn that their widowed parents are engaged, and they are soon to be step siblings. Liz didn't think her luck could get anymore terrible, but her landlord kicks her out with a three days' notice and has no other choice to move in with Tom, and their parents. 

The book is set in Scotland which in my opinion what made Liz and Tom's banter grittier, funny and all together made their attraction fly off the pages! It did start slow in the beginning but once the main characters got up to their antics and the tension between them got more prominent, I couldn't put it down. I love some tension!

I also loved seeing the relationship they have with each of their parents. Tom loses his dad to cancer and Liz her mom so if parent death is sensitive topic, I'd be weary but I thought it was written very well and I enjoyed how supportive they are of their parent's engagement.  The book's biggest trope is the miscommunication trope, the main characters time and time again have to be told by their loved ones to own up to their feelings and things they shouldn't have done. Usually it really irks me but I enjoyed how it was written in the plot. 

My favorite plot point and the reason why I would recommend this book is Tom and Liz' view on marriage and kids. It was nice to see something other than the standard HEA and it was ultimately more relatable.

The Unbalanced Equation
Author: H. L. Macfarlane

eARC & Book Review
Publish Date: September 15, 2022

We love a STEM-romance combo!

The Unbalanced Equation follows Elizabeth "Liz" Maclean, a postdoc, and her formerPhD assessor, Dr Thomas "Tom" Henderson. After suffering under Tom's scrutiny for four years, Liz is finally free of him as she begins her postdoc - or so she thought. After Tom's lab goes up in flames (shoutout to the undergrads), Tom has no choice but to share a lab bench with Liz...for three whole months.

Just when you think things couldn't get any worse, they do! Much to the duo's dismay, the find out (together) that Liz's dad and Tom's mom are getting married! Combine sharing a workspace, engaged parents, and having to live together (read and you'll find out why!), emotions come to light about why Tom acts the way he does.

This is a smart, spicy rom-com that combines enemies to lovers and forced proximity all wrapped in a STEM-themed bow. For fans of The Hating Game, The Love Hypothesis, and Love on the Brain, this one is for you!

This truly was such a lighthearted, sexy read! It had a great pace and was truly a fun book.

Thank you NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free ecopy. This review is wholly my own.

The cover art gave me Ali Hazelwood vibes and that is what hooked me, plus the enemies to loves story line, but man, this book was a bit of a letdown. The characters were completely unlikeable. They are extremely annoying and hard to stomach.

This book is compared to The Love Hypothesis and The Hating Game and while there were similarities in the storyline, please don't degrade those other two books by comparing with this one.

I will start off by saying I did enjoy the story. I just wish it lived up to its full potential. For me, the enemies part never materialized. The prologue to Chapter 1 jump just skipped over all of it. We got the meet cute, then we jump to she hates him because he has been rude to her all without us seeing any of it. We never see the antagonism between them and are just expected to be on her side because she keeps telling her friends and family how horrible he is. I wanted to be more invested. As a result, when things finally do get spicy, I'm not really as into it as I want to be. There's not a big character transformation for either of them because he's just been being "fake mean" the whole time, and we never see any of it. I just wanted more. More enemies/fighting/meanness, more character depth, more payoff when the spice hits... more everything!

If you love Ali Hazelwood then this is the book for you! Macfarlane mixes romance with science in this deliciously sweet romance. An enemies to lovers, forced proximity romance between Liz and Tom leads to a lot of arguments and misunderstandings, but it is not without it's warm moments too. The Unbalanced Equation was a fun read, though some of Tom's actions were certainly reputable, I did overall enjoy the book.

The hype is strong with this one and it didn´t disappoint.

Forced proximity and enemies to lovers are two of my favorite tropes and even though I wouldn´t considered Tom and Liz to be enemies, cause he doesn´t hate her, he´s just really dumb for a scientist.

Olive is a very relatable character, a sweetheart I adored her throughout the whole book.
Tom on the other hand deserves a good smack for how dense he is, it´s like looking at a teen doing puppy eyes to his teacher.

The story is super cute and the reason for the close proximity is hilarious and ridiculous but it certainly helps to make this book entertaining. The level off scientific detail that the author put into this book leads me to believe that she has background in that area.

The age gap between the characters is BIG but at the end works great and makes all of Tom´s dumb moments to be even funnier.

I loved this book and for sure will be in the lookout for more books from this author.
This book is a quick, fluffy read that had me glued to the pages, couldn’t put it down.

I do not mean to sound bitter but, I was promised a "A Smart, sexy enemies-to-lovers story perfect for fans of The Hating Game and The Love Hypothesis' and I did not get the smart part or the enemies-to-lovers part. This seemed to be another fanfiction, like The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood (which was very well written but was a bit triggering for me in some aspects).
I loved loved how badass the FMC was, the humour was on point, and the sexual tension was steamy, pun intended.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough, because the enemies-to-lovers part was, to put it plainly, a disaster and the STEM part was almost non-existent and blander than porridge, a mere excuse for the characters to engage in conversation. The plot was cliche and not to mention that age gap, honestly, I was not prepared for it. I could've ignored it if it wasn't in my face every time the male mc had his PoV.

The attraction between the two MCs was mostly sexual with little to no character development. Also, most of their conversations happened when at least one of them was drunk or intoxicated.

Overall, the plot was very cliche and any fanfiction reader could've seen this from a mile away. 2/5, not my cup of coffee.

In the vein of Ali Hazelwood, The Unbalanced Equation is a delightfully nerdy rom/com. Liz and Tom meet and hit it off the day before he finds out he'll be her assessor for her graduate program. After a tortured several years, Liz finally graduates and is free of Tom... Or so she thinks. Then life finds every way to throw them together. Liz is unapologetically nerdy and firm in her convictions. Tom for his part is simultaneously sweet and frustrating. Overall the book came together in a telling that was hard to put down.
#netgalley #theunbalancedequation

Anyone out there looking for an “enemies to lovers to enemies to step-siblings to lovers book”? Very specific trope isn’t it? This book really has it all. Great banter, steamy sex, some amazing groveling, step siblings who hook up and nobody thinks that it’s weird. Overall, this was a big winner for me.

Tom and Liz are geneticists forced to share a lab bench after Tom’s lab burns down. Liz hates Tom bc he was her PhD assessor and acted like a big dickwad bc he had a crush on her yet has the emotional maturity of a 6 yo. Tom and Liz find out that their widowed parents are engaged to each other and as fate would have it, they all end up moving into Tom’s luxurious townhouse together. Things get steamy fast as the crazy genetcists are attracted to each other like cytosine is to guanine (#dnahumor), but then Tom blows it all up bc he’s a child who makes bad decisions. Neither of these two boneheads could effectively communicate their feelings…even all the other characters in the book were telling them to stop being fuckwits and just talk to each other. Despite their flaws, I still rooted for Tom and Liz and loved their chemistry. Would def recommend this one…I’ll say it was a tad slow for me to get into, but once I did I couldn’t put it down.

Allow me to step on my soapbox for a moment- why does at least one character in a romance have to have a dead parent? Walt Disney started this trend with all his princesses and it has carried over into romance novels and I don’t love it one bit. For some people this is a trigger and we use smut as an escape. It’s hard to escape reality when there are dead parents littering the pages of our favorite romance novels. It was a necessary evil for this plot bc the main characters’ widowed parents met and married, thus joining them as sexed up step siblings- so I forgive. But many times, it’s just used as a reason for one MC to be sad/lonely/messy/etc and I’m tired of it. The end.

Smut- 3.13 stars
Romance- 4.82 stars
Story- 4.75 stars
Hot and horny Scottish men as step-brothers with benefits- 17.39 stars

Enemies to lovers trope. A favorite of mine though in The Unbalanced Equation the enemy part is really just on Liz’s side. Liz dislikes Tom with a passion. After they met at a party, he became her PhD assessor and was super tough on her. He had his reasons though she does not know. Now, due to a fire in a lab, they are working in close proximity to each other. It gets better in the fact that their parents have been dating and are now getting married. Liz’s landlord asks her to vacate her apartment, so she moves in with Tom. It is a enemies to lovers trope but also a close proximity one.
I really enjoyed this book a lot. The characters were well written. Looking back on the author’s other books, this book seems to stray away from what she usually writes about. I have not read her other works, but I think she really killed it. Out of the two characters, I preferred Tom to Liz when it comes to attitude but I do understand the issue for the chip on Liz’s shoulder.
The Unbalanced Equation has funny parts, nerdy parts, and hot steamy parts. This is definitely not a closed door romance. I recommend this to anyone looking for a nice, quick, hot read.
Thanks to NetGalley, BooksGoSocial, and H.L. Macfarlane for the e-ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

I utterly enjoyed myself during this one. Fun and super easy to get through. Some anime references that I didn’t follow, but it doesn’t take away from the story. Spicy scenes are explicit but they weren’t super long 🥺.

No epic plot, but it was a great pallet cleanser with a side of escapism.

Special thanks to Netgalley and BooksGoSocial for this digital ARC.

18+ always check content warnings

The only reason I finished this was for net galley.
This book was so slow and I hate Tom.
He’s a waking red flag. Not even just the childish crux of the enemies to lovers. Because god forbid he control himself or report a conflict of interest sometime in the last four years. Or the fact that he was in her phone controlling her dating life and housing situation. He is way too controlling and it is concerning. He makes everything about him and sucks at being a decent human.

Characters: 24
Plot: 30
Overall: 37

- enemies to lovers
- coworkers
- woman in stem
- forced proximity
- a controlling walking red flag

Cute rom com read. He falls first, she isn’t interested and is quite honestly glad to be away from him when her work in his lab is done and she can move on. Phew! And yet life circumstances keep bringing them together again and again. Will they, won’t they? Its a fun read to finding out.

I don't know if this was funnier because it's set in Glasgow, or because I have the voices of the characters in my head! The accents are fighting for supremacy in my brain!

Tom is a prominent academic and when he meets Liz at a department social event, they bond over cheap booze and give in to an instant attraction. After a disaster strikes and they have to change clothes, what-might-have-been never happens and Tom later finds out that Liz is his new Ph.D. candidate. So that instant attraction has to go into hiding - and he covers up the simmering feelings he has with a snotty attitude towards Liz and her work.

Liz really thought Tom might have been a great friend, even if the attraction she felt was one-sided but in the 4 years since their initial meeting she has learned to loathe him. But after a calamitous series of events, they are now not only working in the same lab but their widowed parents are getting married and they're ging to be housemates!

As I live right nearby where Tom lives and the University stands, all the posh, WestEnd Glasgow accents are alive in my head. I've met many people like Tom and he just leapt off the page for me. He was a complete bampot over Liz and let his attempt at keeping them at bay take over and go too far the other way! Liz rode that fine line between love and hate for Tom and I loved ho her wee clan of friends automatically took her side and hated Tom before they met him!

Tom really has to learn where that line is between helping and programming her entire life! All the secondary characters are fully fleshed out and I could attach them to someone I actually know, like Peter became my brother-in-law, who is also from Nigeria, and therefore became all the more real.

Completely immersed myself in this and read it in one go. A solid 4 stars!

Overall this was a good book. I enjoyed the characters and their banters, I liked the plot and it was all in all an enjoyable read. The writing style was easy to follow and for the first half, it was an enjoyable read.

However, in the second half, the plot dragged on and on and I can't keep up with it. It got a bit boring and in my opinion, that's the worst thing a book can be.

Tom and Liz are supposed to be enemies but it was more like pretend enemies since both of them had pretty strong feelings about the other person. But having said all that I genuinely liked Tom and what a goner he was about Liz from the first glance.

As I said it was an enjoyable read and it would have been better with a more well-paced second half.

2.75 ⭐️.

A nicely written romance with flawed but ok protagonists. First of all, I loved the prologue. I was giddy when I read it and so happy that I got the ARC of this book. That feeling didn’t last.

Tom and Liz were so immature, I could never believe they were 27 and 37 respectively. I hated their manipulative ways with each other nor was I amused with Tom sabotaging Liz’s chances. I also didn’t like the reason Tom started being rude to Liz.
It was all too much.

Halfway through I started enjoying it again but then it went downhill again.

The other things enjoyed was the dialogues and drama. Overall ok read I guess.

Dr Thomas Henderson is attending a staff and student undergrad mixer at Glasgow University when he spots a gorgeous woman across the room in a heated discussion about anime with three fellow students. Drawn to her he heads over and jumps into the discussion, several mimosa's later they find themselves covered in the things as a waiter falls. Cleaning up he hopes to get her number but she never comes back. His hopes are dashed further the following day when he is told that he will be her PhD assessor - sop opts to be an elusive dick to her for the next four years.

Elizabeth McClean (Liz) is just finishing off her last bar shift before she prepares to start her post-doc placement. Her night goes from bad to worse when Tom Henderson is there on a stag night. She'd been hoping to be finally rid of her PhD assessing professor who made the last four years hell. Just when she thought things couldn't get any worse she finds out that she will be working in the same lab as him due to a fire in his lab, Her luck is clearly on the downturn when she discovers her father has been secretly dating none other than Tom's mother and they are getting married at Christmas. The cherry on top of her run of bad luck is her landlord selling the flat she lives in and finds herself forced to move in with Tom and their parents!

Over the course of the weeks and months to the wedding, Tom is determined to win Liz's affection now that there is no professional reason that they can't date. But whilst his attempts are somewhat successful his method requires some improvement Liz is confused as to how she feels towards Tom, after feeling dejected after the mixer and his harsh assessments. But she grows to like him despite not wanting the stereotypical life of marriage, kids and a holiday to Tenerife.

To say that I was completely obsessed with the tumultuous relationship between the two main characters is an understatement!

It all started at an university mixer where Liz was speaking with a group of male students about Anime and they didn’t value her opinion or listen really and Tom Henderson came to ‘save’ Liz from the situation.

From there, there were many lows caused by both parts while trying to navigate a shift in family dynamics and to save an upcoming wedding.

Both characters had major flaws especially in what they considered to treat one another, with Tom especially presenting with narcissistic traits.

The writing style of the novel could have been better, with some parts being a simple recount of mental thought processes. I did enjoy this, but it could have been done better.

This was a funny quick read - if you love Ali Hazlewood this will be up your street. Smart, funny and a lot of fun.

Tom and Liz meet at a Ph.D. staff-student mixer and bond over dodgy mimosas and anime. There's an instant attraction, but when Tom becomes her assessor, he (incomprehensibly) decides to quell that by making her life hell. Four years later, they find themselves sharing a lab bench. And when Tom's mum and Liz's dad announce they're getting married, it grows harder for Liz and Tom to continue denying their attraction.

I was so excited to dive into this. It had the potential to be a really great enemies-to-lovers STEM romance. Their banter sometimes worked really well, and there was an obvious attraction (though it seemed to be about 95% physical for most of the book). Once they actually start talking, it was really enjoyable, however that took until the final third of what was a 400k+ word rom-com. There are some well-drawn supporting characters, and I actually loved the plot surrounding their parents. I also enjoy anime, so those references were fun. Perhaps my biggest concern was the central male character. Tom, is a walking, talking 🚩 for a lot of the story. Going into Liz's phone? Creeping on her dates? Essentially being a d¡ck for 4 years simply because he fancies her? Entering her hotel room without even knocking? None of it was acceptable. The only thing that made mecontinue was that he at least expressed remorse. Both Liz and Tom acted like teenagers at times, and the story meanders through several sexual scenarios with dubious consent, without either character properly addressing their feelings, and definitely not anything more than sexual attraction until well into the latter half. Miscommunication or rather total lack of communication is the order of the day, and I applauded Liz's friend Chloë when she finally called Liz out on exactly this, relieved it wasn't just me who was so frustrated.

There are enough coincidences and romance tropes in this book to make you dizzy. It's like the author threw them all in to see which would work and then just decided to leave them all in regardless. Some worked really well, but because there are so many, we end up with most of them not really going anywhere. Rather like the title, the story is ultimately unbalanced, which is such a shame as it had so much potential.

Overall Rating: ❤️❤️❤️
Heat Rating: 🔥🔥🔥
Emotional Rating: 😬😡🤦🏻‍♀️🤔🙈😂🙄😊