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“With her sophomore novel, Ali Hazelwood proves that she is the perfect writer to show that science is sexy as hell, and that love can ‘STEM’ from the most unlikely places. She’s my newest must-buy author.”―Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wish You Were Here

“I cannot get enough of her brand of brainy romance!...Writing with an emotionally brilliant and witty pen, Hazelwood is an absolute romance powerhouse.”―Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling authors of The Unhoneymooners

“Gloriously nerdy and sexy, with on-point commentary about women in STEM.”―Helen Hoang,New York Timesbestselling author of The Heart Principle

“STEMinists, assemble. Your world is about to be rocked.”―Elena Armas, international bestselling author of The Spanish Love Deception

“Snappy dialogue with witty zingers make this tender enemies-to-lovers story, set at NASA in Houston, an unforgettable follow-up to neuroscientist Hazelwood’s popular The Love Hypothesis…Light espionage, some derring-do, and an unexpected villain are just some of the delights in Hazelwood's smart, unusual, and superbly enjoyable tale.”―Booklist, starred review

“The snappy prose, engaging and twisty plot, and utterly endearing characters combine to create pure romance gold.”―Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Love Hypothesis

"A literary breakthrough…The Love Hypothesis is a self-assured debut, and we hypothesize it's just the first bit of greatness we'll see from an author who somehow has the audacity to be both an academic powerhouse and divinely talented novelist."―Entertainment Weekly

“Contemporary romance's unicorn: the elusive marriage of deeply brainy and delightfully escapist.”―Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author

“Funny, sexy and smart, Ali Hazelwood did a terrific job with The Love Hypothesis.”―Mariana Zapata, New York Times bestselling author

1 - The Habenula: Disappointment

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

It's actually a pretty cool story: a scientist friend hooked her up with Pierre Curie. They awkwardly admitted to having read each other's papers and flirted over beakers full of liquid uranium, and he proposed within the year. But Marie was only meant to be in France to get her degree, and reluctantly rejected him to return to Poland.

Womp womp.

Enter the University of Krakow, villain and unintentional cupid of this story, which denied Marie a faculty position because she was a woman (very classy, U of K). Dick move, I know, but it had the fortunate side effect of pushing Marie right back into Pierre's loving, not-yet-radioactive arms. Those two beautiful nerds married in 1895, and Marie, who wasn't exactly making bank at the time, bought herself a wedding dress that was comfortable enough to use in the lab every day. My girl was nothing if not pragmatic.

Of course, this story becomes significantly less cool if you fast forward ten years or so, to when Pierre got himself run over by a carriage and left Marie and their two daughters alone in the world. Zoom into 1906, and that's where you'll find the real moral of this tale: trusting people to stick around is a bad idea. One way or another they'll end up gone. Maybe they'll slip on the Rue Dauphine on a rainy morning and get their skull crushed by a horse-drawn cart. Maybe they'll be kidnapped by aliens and vanish into the vastness of space. Or maybe they'll have sex with your best friend six months before you're due to get married, forcing you to call off the wedding and lose tons of cash in security deposits.

The sky's the limit, really.

One might say, then, that U of K is only a minor villain. Don't get me wrong: I love picturing Dr. Curie waltzing back to Krakow Pretty Woman-style, wearing her wedding-slash-lab gown, brandishing her two Nobel Prize medals, and yelling, "Big Mistake. Big. Huge." But the real villain, the one that had Marie crying and staring at the ceiling in the late hours of the night, is loss. Grief. The intrinsic transience of human relationships. The real villain is love: an unstable isotope, constantly undergoing spontaneous nuclear decay.

And it will forever go unpunished.

Do you know what's reliable instead? What never, ever abandoned Dr. Curie in all her years? Her curiosity. Her discoveries. Her accomplishments.

Science. Science is where it's at.

Which is why when NASA notifies me-Me! Bee Konigswasser!-that I've been chosen as lead investigator of BLINK, one of their most prestigious neuroengineering research projects, I screech. I screech loudly and joyously in my minuscule, windowless office on the Bethesda campus of the National Institutes of Health. I screech about the amazing performance-enhancing technology I'm going to get to build for none other than NASA astronauts, and then I remember that the walls are toilet-paper thin and that my left neighbor once filed a formal complaint against me for listening to nineties female alt-rock without headphones. So I press the back of my hand to my mouth, bite into it, and jump up and down as silently as possible while elation explodes inside me.

I feel just like I imagine Dr. Curie must have felt when she was finally allowed to enroll at the University of Paris in late 1891: as though a world of (preferably nonradioactive) scientific discoveries is finally within grasping distance. It is, by far, the most momentous day of my life, and kicks off a phenomenal weekend of celebrations. Highlights are:

I tell the news to my three favorite colleagues, and we go out to our usual bar, guzzle several rounds of lemon drops, and take turns doing hilarious impressions of that time Trevor, our ugly middle-aged boss, asked us not to fall in love with him. (Academic men tend to harbor many delusions-except for Pierre Curie, of course. Pierre would never.)

I change my hair from pink to purple. (I have to do it at home, because junior academics can't afford salons; my shower ends up looking like a mix between a cotton candy machine and a unicorn slaughterhouse, but after the raccoon incident-which, believe me, you don't want to know about-I wasn't going to get my security deposit back anyway.)

I take myself to Victoria's Secret and buy a set of pretty green lingerie, not allowing myself to feel guilty at the expense (even though it's been many years since someone has seen me without clothes, and if I have my way no one will for many, many more).

I download the Couch-to-Marathon plan I've been meaning to start and do my first run. (Then I limp back home cursing my overambition and promptly downgrade to a Couch-to-5K program. I can't believe that some people work out every day.)

I bake treats for Finneas, my elderly neighbor's equally elderly cat, who often visits my apartment for second dinner. (He shreds my favorite pair of Converse in gratitude. Dr. Curie, in her infinite wisdom, was probably a dog person.)

In short, I have an absolute blast. I'm not even sad when Monday comes. It's same old, same old-experiments, lab meetings, eating Lean Cuisine and shotgunning store-brand LaCroix at my desk while crunching data-but with the prospect of BLINK, even the old feels new and exciting.

I'll be honest: I've been worried sick. After having four grant applications rejected in less than six months, I was sure that my career was stalling-maybe even over. Whenever Trevor called me into his office, I'd get palpitations and sweaty palms, sure that he'd tell me that my yearly contract wasn't going to be renewed. The last couple of years since graduating with my Ph.D. haven't been a whole lot of fun.

But that's over with. Contracting for NASA is a career-making opportunity. After all, I've been chosen after a ruthless selection process over golden boys like Josh Martin, Hank Malik, even Jan Vanderberg, that horrid guy who trash-talks my research like it's an Olympic sport. I've had my setbacks, plenty of them, but after nearly two decades of being obsessed with the brain, here I am: lead neuroscientist of BLINK. I'll design gears for astronauts, gears they'll use in space. This is how I get out of Trevor's clammy, sexist clutches. This is what buys me a long-term contract and my own lab with my own line of research. This is the turning point in my professional life-which, truthfully, is the only kind of life I care to have.

For several days I'm ecstatic. I'm exhilarated. I'm ecstatically exhilarated.

Then, on Monday at 4:33 p.m., my email pings with a message from NASA. I read the name of the person who will be co-leading BLINK with me, and all of a sudden I'm none of those things anymore.



"Do you remember Levi Ward?"

"Brennt da etwas-uh?" Over the phone, Mareike's voice is thick and sleep-laden, muffled by poor reception and long distance. "Bee? Is that you? What time is it?"

"Eight fifteen in Maryland and . . ." I rapidly calculate the time difference. A few weeks ago Reike was in Tajikistan, but now she's in . . . Portugal, maybe? "Two a.m. your time."

Reike grunts, groans, moans, and makes a whole host of other sounds I'm all too familiar with from sharing a room with her for the first two decades of our lives. I sit back on my couch and wait it out until she asks, "Who died?"

"No one died. Well, I'm sure someone died, but no one we know. Were you really sleeping? Are you sick? Should I fly out?" I'm genuinely concerned that my sister isn't out clubbing, or skinny-dipping in the Mediterranean Sea, or frolicking with a coven of warlocks based in the forests of the Iberian Peninsula. Sleeping at night is very out of character.

"Nah. I ran out of money again." She yawns. "Been giving private lessons to rich, spoiled Portuguese boys during the day until I make enough to fly to Norway."

I know better than to ask "Why Norway?" since Reike's answer would ju

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

A #1 LibraryReads and Indie Next Pick!

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis comes a new STEMinist rom-com in which a scientist is forced to work on a project with her nemesis―with explosive results.

Like an avenging, purple-haired Jedi bringing balance to the mansplained universe, Bee Konigswasser 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 after years scraping by on the crumbs of academia―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. And sure, he caught her in his powerfully corded arms like a romance novel hero when she accidentally damseled in distress on her first day in the lab. But Levi made his feelings toward Bee very clear in grad school―archenemies work best employed in their own galaxies far, far away.

Now, her equipment is missing, the staff is ignoring her, and Bee finds her floundering career in somewhat of a pickle. Perhaps it’s her occipital cortex playing tricks on her, but Bee could swear she can see Levi softening into an ally, backing her plays, seconding her ideas…devouring her with those eyes. And 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 Konigswasser do?