Ali Hazelwood: books in order and where to start

Who is Ali Hazelwood

Ali Hazelwood is an Italian novelist based in the United States and a career neuroscience professor — she researched brain stimulation and cognition before leaving her chair in 2022 to write full-time.

Her debut, The Love Hypothesis, came out in September 2021 and stayed more than 40 weeks on The New York Times list. Before it became a book, the story circulated as a fanfic published in 2018 — a path that explains much of the fast-page rhythm that marks her work.

Since then the author has published on three fronts that coexist without mixing: adult romance set in academia, short novellas, and works that leave campus — including the young adult Check & Mate and the paranormal line that begins with Bride.

Where to start

If your way in was The Love Hypothesis, stay on the same track: the adult, academically set romance is the heart of the author and the ground where she is most recognizable.

If you prefer fantasy and creatures, the door is Bride (published in Brazil as Noiva) — it changes genre, keeps the humor and opens a series of its own.

If you want something short to test the author, the STEMinist novellas are the lowest-stakes investment: short stories, same humor, same world of research.

• Want a lab romantic comedy: start with The Love Hypothesis.
• Want the same author in a new genre: start with Bride.
• Want something young and quick: start with Check & Mate.
• Want something short before deciding: start with the STEMinist novellas.

Main books

The two books that appear most often on lists are The Love Hypothesis and Love, Theoretically — the first is the work that became a film, the second is the most discussed adult romance after it, and it also received a film project announced by Amazon MGM Studios in 2026, with Sofia Alvarez writing and directing, Colleen Hoover and Lauren Levine among the producers, and the author herself as executive producer.

Check & Mate is the author's young adult romance, centered on chess, and it asks to be read off the scale of the adult romances — it changes audience before it changes tone.

The paranormal front gathers Bride and its sequel Mate, plus the Bound and Unbound novella duology. It's the part of the catalog that moves furthest from campus: the conflict is creatures, alliance and politics between factions.

Contemporary romance and the academic setting

What ties the author's adult romances together is less the plot and more the ground: women working in male-dominated fields, lab hierarchy, dry humor, and a conflict that almost always begins with someone who won't allow themselves to want.

This is the block that sustains the author's reputation as a STEM romance specialist — and it's also where the reader finds the most recognizable formula. Whoever likes it will reread; whoever wants variety should vary track, not title within the same track.

Worth noting that the adult romances generally work as standalone reads from one another. There's no need to read in order to keep up — which makes entry much easier for newcomers.

Bride and the way into paranormal romance

Bride is the turning point of the catalog: a marriage of convenience between a vampire and a werewolf Alpha, staged as a political alliance between factions. The Brazilian edition, Noiva, was published by Arqueiro on March 7, 2024, with 368 pages, translated by Raquel Zampil.

This is catalog information, not a recent release — the date matters because a common error treats Bride as a 2026 novelty. The work already has a published sequel in Mate, from 2025.

Its relationship to The Love Hypothesis is one of author, not story: the two books share neither characters nor universe. What runs through them is the humor and the structure of two people forced to share space.

Tonal differences

Rather than treat the catalog as a single block, it's worth mapping the tone of each track before choosing — because the difference between them is large.

How to choose the next book

The most useful question isn't “which comes next?”, it's “which genre do I want right now?”. Only after answering that does the numbering stop mattering — because across most of the catalog, it doesn't exist.

• Same humor, same world: any other adult romance set in academia.
• Same author, new genre: Bride, then Mate.
• Short, to test: the STEMinist novellas, in publication order.
• Outside romance: Check & Mate, a young adult standalone apart from the rest.

And there's one last decision, this one commercial: two screen projects involve the author — The Love Hypothesis film and the Love, Theoretically project at Amazon MGM. If your idea is to read before you watch, it's worth starting with The Love Hypothesis, the work already adapted.

Book table

The order below is the publication order of the main books — and it should not be read as a reading order, because most of the work is standalone.

Frequently asked questions

The doubts that come up most around the catalog are always the same: order, connections between books, and where to start after the film.