From book to screen: The Love Hypothesis (2026) review
Photo Courtesy of Amazon Prime Video- Wikimedia Commons
On Sept. 23, my most anticipated movie of the year was released on Amazon Prime: The Love Hypothesis (2026). This movie is the screen adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s New York Times bestselling book The Love Hypothesis, published in 2021. My first time reading the book was in the beginning of 2022. I have been obsessed with it ever since. I documented on my Goodreads that I had read it four times, but the actual number of times I have reread the book is a lot higher than that. It is safe to say that I was beyond thrilled when the movie was announced.
The movie follows Olive Smith, a PhD student at Stanford University. Olive ends up in a fake dating relationship with Dr. Adam Carlsen, a known difficult professor at Stanford, in order to deceive her friend Anh into thinking she is in a relationship.
As seen on IMDb, Lilli Reinhart portrays Olive Smith alongside her co-star, Tom Bateman, who plays the role of Adam Carlsen. The casting choices for these characters are absolutely perfect. Lilli does a wonderful job portraying Olive; through her body language and her line delivery, it is as if the words on the page came to life in Lilli Reinhart form.
Tom Bateman is also great in his role. At first, I was very skeptical about him being casted. ELLE shares that the original book is based on a Star Wars fanfiction of Rey and Kylo Ren, meaning that Adam Carlsen was meant to be Kylo Ren’s actor, Adam Driver. So when I imaged what Adam Carlsen looked like when reading the book, all I was picturing was Adam Driver. However, Tom exceeded my expectations. The way he portrayed his love for Olive in a small and subtle way was perfect. He started out the movie as intimidating and reserved but as the story progressed his facial expressions got softer.
Like most book to screen adaptations, there are plot changes from the original storyline. The Love Hypothesis (2026) is no exception. I thought there were some good changes but also some very poor changes. I will start with the good changes. In the beginning of the movie, they give a backstory of Olive and Anh’s friendship. We see how they first met and how close they became. It sets up the reason as to why Olive goes through a fake dating situation with Adam for Anh’s benefit perfectly.
Towards the end of the book, Anh is completely blindsided when Olive admits to her that the relationship with Adam is fake. But in the movie, when it is revealed to Anh, she shares that she knew it was fake the entire time. I thought this was a great change as it showed how well Anh knew Olive. It is very unrealistic for two alleged best friends who know everything about each other to not realize someone is acting differently.
Now, I will get into the changes they made to the movie that I was not a fan of. The biggest change they made was Adam not being in love with Olive for years. To give some context, when Olive is first interviewed for her PhD program at Stanford, she runs into a guy in the bathroom while she is fixing her expired contacts that are burning her eyes. She could not see and was stressed about her interview, but this man was able to calm Olive down. That man in the bathroom was Adam. In the book, Adam had been in love with her ever since that meeting in the bathroom. But in the movie, Adam does not pine for Olive in that same way. I can understand why they changed this as it may have taken more time to explain to the audience with a shorter time span.
The biggest change from the book to the screen that I was most upset about was the removal of the character Holden. In the book, Holden is Adam’s best friend. He grounds Adam and shows Olive and the readers that Adam has a soft side and is not just some evil professor that loves to fail his students. With this change, we learn very little about Adam as a person. He has very little backstory in the movie which makes Adam feel undeveloped as a character.
I had very big expectations for this movie, and despite the few changes they made to the movie, I am willing to argue that it is the best rom-com to come out this year. I have been consuming every edit of this movie that crosses my for you page on TikTok. I was absolutely blown away by the supporting cast; according to IMDb, Rachel Marsh played Anh and Jaboukie Young-White played Malcom, one of Olive’s friends; the two of them stole the show with their comedic timing. Overall, it was a wonderful movie. I was giggling and kicking my feet at some parts of the movie and shedding a tear during other parts.
There is wonderful news for any Ali Hazelwood book lovers. According to Deadline, her book, Love Theoretically, is in talks about being developed into a movie by Prime Video. That is another great book by Hazelwood and I will be in as much anticipation as I was with The Love Hypothesis (2026)!