Love on the Brain is Ali Hazelwood's STEM focused romantic comedy, built around workplace romance, enemies to lovers, forced proximity and the increasingly popular literary phenomenon of putting two extremely competent scientists in a room together and assuming they will immediately become idiots about each other. Bee Königswasser is a neuroscientist recruited to lead a NASA neuroengineering project, only to discover that her co lead is Levi Ward, the man she believes has hated her since graduate school. Meanwhile, equipment disappears, her workplace becomes strangely hostile and something considerably more suspicious than romantic tension is happening around the project.
The romance is the real engine here, and Hazelwood knows precisely how to make it run. Bee and Levi have chemistry, but the appeal comes less from the novelty of their relationship than from the slow accumulation of tiny moments that reveal Levi's feelings long before Bee is willing to believe them. The supposedly antagonistic relationship is also nicely skewed because, frankly, Levi is not nearly as convinced they are enemies as Bee is. This makes the tension less about whether they will fall for each other and more about how spectacularly long Bee can misunderstand a situation that seems obvious to everyone else.
Which brings us to the book's biggest weakness: miscommunication. Romance has been using misunderstandings since approximately forever, and there is nothing inherently wrong with the trope. The problem is execution. Here, Bee's refusal to trust what Levi says occasionally stretches credibility, particularly because she is otherwise presented as an accomplished scientist who should theoretically be quite good at examining evidence. (Apparently the scientific method stops at the bedroom door.)
The STEM setting is more successful. Hazelwood clearly enjoys putting women in technical environments and giving workplace sexism enough attention to matter without allowing it to swallow the romance. Bee's career ambitions are part of her character rather than decorative wallpaper, and the NASA setting gives the story a procedural backdrop that is more interesting than the usual fictional office.
The mystery involving sabotage adds another layer, although it is considerably less developed than the romance. It arrives as a useful source of external tension but never quite becomes the elegantly constructed puzzle it might have been. The clues are there, but this is not really a book asking you to solve anything.
Against the longer tradition of romantic comedy, Love on the Brain is knowingly trope heavy rather than innovative. Hazelwood does not reinvent enemies to lovers or workplace romance. She simply understands that familiar ingredients can still work when the characters have enough charm.
The result is breezy, nerdy and frequently ridiculous in exactly the way a comfort read should be. It occasionally mistakes repetition for tension, but Bee and Levi have enough warmth and chemistry to carry the machinery. Just do not ask the neuroscientist to communicate clearly. That, apparently, is beyond the current limits of science.