Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Series: Hot Mess Trilogy #1
Published by Self-Published on September 15, 2022
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 416
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
Goodreads
Amazon




What do a bad landlord, a family wedding and a rogue Bunsen burner all have in common?
After suffering four years of scrutiny from her PhD assessor, Elizabeth Maclean believes she’s finally free of Dr Thomas Henderson’s tyranny when she begins her postdoc. But when a fire goes off in Tom’s lab (stupid undergrads) he ends up working in the same lab as Liz.
On the same bench, no less.
For three whole months.
To make matters worse – and much to their mutual surprise – Tom’s mum and Liz’s dad announce their impending marriage after a whirlwind romance. So when Liz’s landlord tells her to move out, pronto, it tips her over the edge. Desperate for a place to stay and in need of a saviour, the last person Liz expects to offer her a temporary home is Tom himself.
Now stuck working together, living together and planning their parents’ Christmas wedding together, will Liz discover that Tom’s attitude over the last four years was all a ruse to hide his true feelings? Or are the two doomed to fail in their co-existence experiment?
The Unbalanced Equation is a standalone book being billed for fans of The Hating Game and The Love Hypothesis. I wanted to love this book and I had extremely high hopes for it especially since I’m a huge fan of stories of women in STEM. Sometimes I’ve found you just don’t like characters which taints the entire book for you. For me, both Tom and Liz were ridiculously flawed and while they probably deserve each other I didn’t enjoy reading about them as much as I like most stories in this genre. I should have loved so many of the tropes in this. It has enemies to lovers (sort of), age differences, women in science and forced proximity are the main focuses of the story and I like a lot of those things but couldn’t seem to really grow attached to the characters.
Tom and Liz met at a mixer for the students and faculty when Liz was coning in to start her Doctorate. Their intro meet is cute enough, even if it did have a lot of anime references that I didn’t get. But immediately after that, Tom learns due to some events he will be her advisor, so he had to keep his hands off. His very grown up solution to this is to decide to treat Liz poorly and be mean to her for the next four years so he won’t forget he can’t cross that advisor/student line. Maybe if I’d seen how he treated her badly I could get on the enemy to lovers trope but it is four years later and we never see one interaction between them in those years we just know he is a jerk.
Tom and Liz are thrown together in the same lab to work when Tom’s lab burns down, they are thrown together even more when they find out their parents are getting married. In preparation for the wedding and having a blended family all of them end up living in the same very large house to amplify the amount of time Liz and Tom will be spending together. It was a bit coincidental that Tom and Liz would be both working and living together but *shrugs* I was willing to go with that part of the story at least.
The science part of the story was pretty strong. As someone who has worked in labs for 17 years of my career I found most of that stuff well researched. There are moments in this book that are really cute and made me think well these characters are growing on me. But then one of the characters would do something so childish and silly that I’d be mad at them again. Tom specifically crossed some pretty big lines in the book for me when he broke into Liz’s phone and started declining her Tinder dates. But both characters have some red-flag issues for me. If you can get past the red-flag issues though there is a pretty cute ending pay off.
Really this wasn’t for me. The characters were far too childish and this isn’t YA so I thought their emotions and reasoning should be more complex. Tom is 34 and 38 in the story with Liz ten years younger than him. We would expect him to be a bit more mature but I found he and Liz both struggled with maturity in emotional decisions. So they were perfect for each other but not my favorite couple to follow through a romantic journey.
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I hoped this one would be better. I love this kind of story.
Me too! I had super high hopes and just couldn’t find a way to adore the characters. For two people so book smart they were incredibly immature.
I love STEM romances, too…when I like the characters. But if I don’t love the characters, I don’t love the book, and I really don’t enjoy childish characters. I’m sorry this one wasn’t better.
Right! I wanted to like the characters so much. I kept giving them chance after chance only to disappointed in the end. The resolution was cute but it was a lot of cringe for me to get there.
I really enjoy STEM stories, sorry this one was a bit of a miss for you
ME TOO! I like heroes and Heroines that just happen to be in Science, Technologies, Engineering and Math since I’m one of those women it they sometimes really hit home with me. Liz though for being so smart was incredibly stupid. The same with Tom. For me it was so hard to like them.
Oh, I saw this on Netgalley too and debating whether to request or not. I also love the cover. Nice review, Robin. I understand you! I’m kinda picky with romance books because most of the time the characters are so immature (or maybe I’m just bad at picking books 🙈)
The older I get the pickier/more discerning I become. Really liked the premise of the story and the cover is great.
I have seen this one on NetGalley and admit that I was curious. I have a feeling that I would have a similar reaction to these characters.
Carole I think our tastes run pretty similar on this front so probably.
You win some, you lose some. I know the feeling.
For sure. Luckily it seems I win way more than I lose
Bummer this wasn’t for you.
Sorry to hear this one didn’t work for you. Based on your review I probably won’t add it to my TBR either. Thanks for sharing!