Steamy in STEM | 3.3.23
Making science sexy
It will likely surprise no one that I leaned heavily towards liberal arts as a younger person, though it might surprise you to learn that when I was in 7th grade, my friends and I would make up algebra problems for each other to solve. Until 8th grade I was always at least 1-2 years ahead of my grade in math, and then in 8th grade I wrote my first novel (a chaotic 35k ramble of a manuscript with magic and a graphic parental murder cold open) and basically fully shut down the parts of my brain that engaged with STEM at all. Doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate when other people write about those nerdy subjects, though! Also, I’m feeling good about the eclectic nature of these three books as a group. Validate me by reading further!
The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren. Jess is a statistician and a single mom to the precocious Juno whose entire world fits into roughly 2 mile radius. She works “from home” (aka at the cafe around the corner), lives across the way from her grandparents who raised her and who frequently babysit, and takes Juno to school only a couple blocks away. Her best friend Fizzy (whose book is coming out in a few months!!!) is a romance author who regularly joins her for her office hours at the cafe, and the two of them have gotten a little obsessed with a hot guy who comes in at the same time every day, seems grumpy as hell, and orders the same exact drink every time. So they ask him what his deal is, and he reveals his name is River Peña (hot), he’s a scientist (hot), and he is the co-founder of a dating app (ehh, but this could be my own trauma related to working for start ups L-O-L) that takes a DNA sample like those Ancestry dot com places and matches you with other users based on how aligned your genetics match up, based on markers he’s discovered that determine love compatibility.
So naturally not only do Fizzy (love-obsessed and psyched) and Jess (highly cynical) decide to send in their DNA, but Jess and River end up having the highest possible compatibility the fledgling company has ever seen, and because they’re a few months away from the company going public, the company asks if she and River will consent to publicly getting to know each other as a marketing tactic with the hopeful (but not required contractually) result being the founder of the company falling in love via the very company he founded.
Of course, it’s not so simple, and I love this almost fake-dating/marriage-of-convenience-adjacent story because it has a lot of the aspects of what I love about those tropes (forced proximity, heightened awareness of the outside world related to their relationship, a sense of partnership through circumstance that blossoms into romantic partnership) but with a new twist.
Rating: 4/5
How hot? 🔥🔥
Some Like it Scandalous by Maya Rodale. Book 2 in The Gilded Age Girls Club series brings the science of beauty to Gilded Age NYC with a dash of enemies-to-lovers // fake engagement in case that wasn’t spicy enough already! Daisy Swan is the daughter of a prominent family who is losing patience for her chemistry “hobby” while she’s still unmarried, not that she cares much herself. Theodore Prescott the Third is a childhood nemesis of hers whose father threatens to cut him off after his most recent scandal (involving a nude woman on a horse, but spoiler alert, it’s more than meets the eye) if he doesn’t marry someone respectable.
Naturally, their parents force them to get engaged. But they decide two things very quickly, as they can’t stand each other but need to play along for their parents’ sake: 1. This engagement will never end in a marriage and 2. They can both benefit from the reprieve being already engaged can grant. And it just so happens that Daisy’s genuinely high-quality but fairly ugly-looking cosmetics line (she’s using chemistry and her grandmother’s old recipes to mass produce lotions, creams, and even makeup) needs the sweet-talking charisma and branding that Theo usually only uses for selfish reasons. So the nerdy scientist and her all-about-appearances rake of a fake fiance band together to build a business that grants them both enough financial independence to get out from under their family’s thumbs… and therefore out of the need to marry. But what if they… want… to get married after all?
This whole series is a favorite of mine (book 1 will be getting a shout out this year for SURE, I literally have not stopped thinking about it since I read it, I just need to find a third book to recommend it with), all about romantic pairs who solve their [relatively common for romance novel] problems not through conventional or societally-approved means, but through their brains and their ambition. And they fall in love to boot! It’s great. Or as great as a book that ultimately utilizes capitalism as a path to freedom can be.
Rating: 4.5/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
A Brush With Love by Mazey Eddings. First of all, can we all just agree that “Mazey Eddings” is a GREAT name? As a person with the name Bri Castellini, arguably also a pretty great name, I am qualified to make this assessment.
ONTO THE BOOK! Harper (love a character named Harper- lotta good names in this recommendation!) is in her final year of med school, awaiting her placement in a [hopefully top] oral surgery residency program and completely overwhelmed with work and school when she’s walloped upside the head with a classic romcom meet-cute: colliding violently with her soulmate in the hallway. Enter: Dan! A first year dental student whose passion for their shared discipline is severely lacking, for many reasons, not the least of which being that he had a whole separate career before going back to school (because despite their program start dates, he’s older by a bit) and was lowkey forced into dentistry.
Dan is immediately enamored (enamel-ed?) by Harper, but Harper’s got goals, an anxiety disorder, and way too much going on for a boyfriend, so they agree (despite their obvious and immediate attraction) to be friends. I’m sure THAT’LL BE THAT, THEN!
This book’s depiction of a panic attack is heartbreaking to read and also extremely accurate- nearly as accurate as I found Jane The Virgin’s depiction (my previous pop-culture go-to example), and though as with most debuts this book had some clunkier/less polished aspects, I really enjoyed reading about Dan and Harper falling in love with each other and with their respective career fields. Could have lived my whole life without such detail about oral surgery and dentistry, though.
Rating: 4/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
Next week, I’ll be recommending books that feature workplace romances- a terrible idea in real life, a GREAT idea to force fictional lovers into proximity with one another. Join me then, and please remember to share this newsletter with your friends and family! It really helps me out, and I’d love to keep doing this newsletter
What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!