Spotlight & Giveaway: LOVE ON THE BRAIN by Ali Hazelwood

Posted August 23rd, 2022 by Sara @HarlequinJunkie in Blog, Spotlight / 33 comments

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Ali Hazelwood to HJ!

Hi Ali and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, LOVE ON THE BRAIN!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

LOVE ON THE BRAIN is the story of Bee, a neuroscientist who has the opportunity of a lifetime when she’s tasked to lead a prestigious NASA project—and then finds out that her grad school nemesis, Levi, will be leading the engineering part of the project.

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

I can’t really choose a line, so I’ll choose a scene: Bee gets stuck in a cemetery at night while going on a run, and she has to and has to ask Levi to come extract her. At that point in the story they’re still enemy-ish, which made it really fun to write! A few lines are:

The second Levi appears I want to kiss him for rescuing me from the mosquitos, and the ghosts, and the ghosts of the mosquitos. I also want to kill him for witnessing the extent of the humiliation of Bee Königswasser, human disaster. What can I say? I contain multitudes.
He steps out of an oil-guzzling truck that I sadly have no right to complain about anymore, surveys the wall, and comes to stand on the other side of the gate. To his credit, if he’s smirking he’s doing it on the inside. His expression is neutral when he asks, “You okay?”
Does thoroughly mortified count as okay? Let’s say: “Yeah.”
“Good. This is what we’re going to do: I’ll slide in the ladder through the gates, and you’ll use it to get on top of the wall. I’ll be on the other side to catch you.”
I frown. He sounds very… in charge. Self-assured. Not that he usually doesn’t, but it’s having a new… effect on me. Oh my god. Am I a damsel in distress?
“How will we retrieve the ladder?”
“I’ll drive by tomorrow morning and pick it up.”
“What if someone steals it?”
“I’ll have lost a precious heirloom passed down my family for generations.”
“Really?”
“No. Ready?”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

The working title was Brain Book. Then it changed to Love In The Brain. Then, Love On The Brain. Then, briefly, What Would Marie Curie Do? And finally, we went back to Love On The Brain
Yes, I was listening to Rihanna a lot at the time
While drafting, I googled a lot about the expression of anal glands in cats
I discovered that gummy bears are not vegan and are in fact made from animal bones when while writing the book and I was SHOCKED!

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

He falls for her because of her free-spiritedness, she’s falls for him because of his kindness (and because of his cat).

Readers should read this book….

If they enjoy the fresh scent of pining heroes

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’m currently working on my fourth book!

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: (1) One copy of LOVE ON THE BRAIN to a winner with a valid US shipping address.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Glitter: yay or nay? (I promise it’s related to the book!)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Book Info:

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis comes a new STEMinist rom-com in which a scientist is forced to work on a project with her nemesis—with explosive results.

Like an avenging, purple-haired Jedi bringing balance to the mansplained universe, Bee Königswasser lives by a simple code: What would Marie Curie do? If NASA offered her the lead on a neuroengineering project—a literal dream come true after years scraping by on the crumbs of academia—Marie would accept without hesitation. Duh. But the mother of modern physics never had to co-lead with Levi Ward.

Sure, Levi is attractive in a tall, dark, and piercing-eyes kind of way. And sure, he caught her in his powerfully corded arms like a romance novel hero when she accidentally damseled in distress on her first day in the lab. But Levi made his feelings toward Bee very clear in grad school—archenemies work best employed in their own galaxies far, far away.

Now, her equipment is missing, the staff is ignoring her, and Bee finds her floundering career in somewhat of a pickle. Perhaps it’s her occipital cortex playing tricks on her, but Bee could swear she can see Levi softening into an ally, backing her plays, seconding her ideas…devouring her with those eyes. And the possibilities have all her neurons firing. But when it comes time to actually make a move and put her heart on the line, there’s only one question that matters: What will Bee Königswasser do?

Meet the Author:

Ali Hazelwood is the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis, as well as a writer of peer-reviewed articles about brain science, in which no one makes out and the ever after is not always happy. Originally from Italy, she lived in Germany and Japan before moving to the U.S. to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience. She recently became a professor, which absolutely terrifies her. When Ali is not at work, she can be found running, eating cake pops, or watching sci-fi movies with her two feline overlords (and her slightly-less-feline husband).