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 honed people pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.

Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, right between Elsie and her dream job.

Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?

I liked this book. Not as much as Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (2022) but close enough. A hell of a lot more than the toyboy story full of spelling mistakes.

The concept is simple, a nerdy girl finds true love where she least expected it – the hunky brother of a fake date she’d gone to.

But ten months ago, when I graduated with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Northeastern, I figured that by now I’d have a reasonably remunerated academic position. I did not imagine that at twenty-seven I’d be paying my water bill by helping adult men pretend that they have dating lives. And yet here I am, fake-girlfriending my way through my student loans.

And Jack, that’s the guy’s name, is sexy. Not like Logic Hart, but definitely better (and thank you for naming him something sensible!)

I’m not sure what Jack’s deal is. There’s a dash of bad boy there, a hint of mystery, a dollop of smoothness. And yet a touch of hunger, a raw, unrefined air. Mostly, he looks cool. Too cool to even be cool. Like maybe in high school he skipped the school dance for a Guggenheim fellow’s art exhibition and somehow still managed to get elected prom king.
Jack looks distant. Uninterested. Effortlessly confident. Charismatic in an intriguingly opaque, inaccessible way.

That being said, there’s a lot of time in the book spent on papers she writes, job applications, interviews, grading papers and a lot of mundane stuff that both makes the couple more real and adds a bit of boredom for me. If I wanted to read about everyday life, I’d go to bbc news.

That being said, the book features some … very good sex scenes. Insanely good. Nothing like the Best sex scene in Atlas Shrugged or The worst sex scene in 1Q84 – Extract from Haruki Murakami.

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Yeah.” He eases my legs open, or maybe they spread all on their own. His cock pushes against my abdomen first and then slides down the wet mess of my folds, slots against my entrance. “We will.”
It suddenly seems improbable that this is going to work. He’s much bigger than J.J., and even though I was aware of this before, at some abstract, theoretical level, the practical implications are now glaringly obvious. This is a physical impossibility. That, or it’s going to hurt like hell. And this is the part of sex I’ve always liked the least—someone pushing inside me, and me struggling to adjust, to keep up, to accept. I imagine it will be the same, and for a split second I wonder if I could bear it, not liking this. With Jack.
It’s new, worrying about my own enjoyment. I’m contemplating it, vaguely dumbfounded, when something changes.
Jack presses into me.
The head of his cock slides inside, just one or two inches.
My body contracts around him in a small spasm.
I let out a choked cry, and he slurs something that sounds like “Fuck” against my cheek. I arch into him as air rushes out of my lungs, trying to get closer, trying to chase that feeling.
This is—nice. Really, really nice. Unprecedentedly nice. Maybe I’m just wet enough, maybe I’m more relaxed than ever, but he’s not even halfway inside and I’m fluttering around him, the tingling of an orgasm already deep inside my belly.
“Holy fuck,” Jack rasps, and helps me go after whatever this is. His hand slips between us, thumb pressing against my clit, and I tighten even more around him, a reedy whimper coming out of my throat, mixing with his loud groan.
My head whites out. I’m confused. Dizzy. I don’t think I came, but this is good in a way I cannot even begin to parse […]

“Is it all in?”
He shakes his head. I consider laughing in his face, telling him that he’s lying, but he’s in no shape to do so. His eyes are glassy. The arm he’s propped himself up on is shaking on the side of my head, like the effort to pace himself is somewhere above the realm of what’s human.
“You’re . . . big.”
He nods, like he knows and it doesn’t matter. My nipples are hard pebbles against the expanse of his chest, and the contact is exquisite. I could come just from this—rubbing myself against him.
I let out a reedy laugh. “Is this what sex feels like for normal people?” I ask, moving my hips, circling, tipping back and forth, just to see where this could end up going. The possibilities are tantalizing.

“No one has felt like this in all of history,” he tells me, voice deep and shaky, and then he’s kissing me hard, his tongue licking inside my mouth, and after a few seconds of that I’m softer, I’m open, I’m lost, and it takes only two upward thrusts, one forceful and the other almost accidental. Then I’m taking him right to the hilt, feeling his sack flush against me, and it feels like something dreamt, something meant to be.
“Fuck,” he murmurs again, but I barely hear him. I focus on my own body, the way it’s stretched full. I feel Jack in the bones of my skull, in the tips of my toes, and everywhere in between. I thrum, flutter gently around him, and even though I’ve never been this close to anyone else, it’s still not enough. He must know, because he gathers me off the mattress in his arms. I am completely, utterly surrounded by him, by the perfect tension of this moment, and Jack begins to push in and out of me, in and out, delicious rhythm and drawn-out friction.
I cannot take it. It’s too brilliantly, stupidly good. My head lolls back against his pillow, and his lips find my jaw, nip my chin, bite my neck. “I’m going to fuck you everywhere, Elsie.” He licks the hollow of my throat. “Between today and the day we die, I’m going to fuck you everywhere.”