Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast - again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange - again…

Mallory Greenleaf is done with chess. Every move counts nowadays; after the sport led to the destruction of her family four years earlier, Mallory’s focus is on her mom, her sisters, and the dead-end job that keeps the lights on. Thatis, until she begrudgingly agrees to play in one last charity tournament and inadvertently wipes the board with notorious “Kingkiller” nolan Sawyer: current world champion and reigning Bad Boy of chess.

The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly hones people pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.

I’m not going to lie, after the short novella series this author put out, I wasn’t very excited for this next book no matter how much I loved The Love Hypothesis so I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this read. I do feel it was different enough from her orignal to stand alone, however there was no mistaking that it was another Reylo story. Just like all the ones before. Don’t get me wrong, I love that trope. I could read 1,000 fics about that pairing. But when I’m looking to actually purchase a romance novel, I’d like some variety. There were enough differences that the plot felt very original however, the two leads were definitely copy and pastes of all her other leads. I liked the story, but I wished it were a little more of a standalone. If this came out first then I’m betting I would have loved it but having seen this done before, I was a little underwhelmed.

As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn’t believe in lasting romantic relationships — but her best friend does, and that’s what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor — and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford’s reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive’s career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding… six-pack abs. Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.