Book Review: Advanced Physical Chemistry by Susannah Nix

Chemistry Lessons Book 3

After a string of lousy boyfriends, chemical engineer Penny Popplestone swears off men until she can figure out why they keep cheating on her. But her no-men resolution hits a snag when the mysterious and superhumanly hot barista at her favorite coffee shop strikes up a friendship with her.

Penny strives to keep things platonic, but when Caleb gives her the kiss of her life, she realizes he wants to be more than just friends. Tired of always being “good little Penny,” she throws caution to the wind and pursues a no-strings fling with the hottie barista. It’s not like they have anything in common beyond scorching physical chemistry, so what does she have to lose?

Her heart, it turns out.

Now, this fanfic-reading, plus-size heroine faces an unsolvable problem. What do you do when being apart is unbearable…but being together is impossible?

Advanced Physical Chemistry is the third in a series of standalone rom-coms featuring geeky heroines who work in STEM fields.

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My Review:

This pair is adorably sweet and utterly heartbreaking. As a self-proclaimed nerd-girl, I love the heroines in this series. They’re smart and geeky and socially awkward and just generally people I understand very well. And since there’s more of Penny to love, I understand her even better. Caleb remains a bit of an enigma through the book, but he does okay showing Penny what she means to him once he finally let’s himself. He’s only human, so that doesn’t always go exactly as planned – or as Penny might hope. These two do a pretty good job of living in the moment, but they’re horrible at talking to one another. The closer they got to the point where they needed to call it quits, and the more my heart hurt. The only thing I would have loved to have changed if I could, would be to see more from Caleb’s perspective. But really, that’s just me being greedy, because it wouldn’t have been the same story if we knew what was going on in Caleb’s head. I received a complimentary advanced copy of this book from the author.

Other books in the series:

Remedial Rocket Science (Chemistry Lessons #1)

Intermediate Thermodynamics (Chemistry Lessons #2)