Why Are Nerds So Damn Attractive?
I have a confession to make.
I think romance books have completely ruined my ability to look at a nerd in the same way ever again.
Because somewhere along the way, the awkward, slightly obsessive guy who spends his evenings talking about science, computers or some incredibly niche subject I don't understand stopped being the nerdy side character and became the man I desperately want the heroine to kiss.
And I know I'm not alone.
There is something about a romance hero who is ridiculously intelligent, completely obsessed with his work and just a little bit socially hopeless that has become very, very appealing. Give him a PhD, a pair of glasses and a tendency to mutter something highly technical under his breath, and apparently, I'm sold.
Which brings me to Adam Carlsen.
Thank you, Ali Hazelwood
If there is one author we can blame for the current hot-nerd epidemic, it's probably Ali Hazelwood.
The Love Hypothesis gave us Adam Carlsen, a brilliant and notoriously grumpy biology professor who is intimidating enough to make most people run in the opposite direction. Unfortunately for us, he's also the sort of man who turns out to have a surprisingly soft side when it comes to the woman he loves.
And now Adam is coming to our screens.
The Prime adaptation of The Love Hypothesis arrives on 23rd September, with Tom Bateman playing Adam and Lili Reinhart as Olive. Which means that readers who have spent years imagining their own version of Adam are about to discover whether Hollywood's version lives up to the man we've been obsessing over.
Personally, I think the most dangerous thing about this adaptation is that it could introduce even more people to the hot nerd.
Because once you've read Ali Hazelwood, it's difficult to stop noticing them.
The nerds are everywhere
Take Love on the Brain, where Hazelwood gives us Levi Ward, a NASA engineer who is enormous, intimidating and seemingly incapable of having a normal conversation with Bee.
Or Love, Theoretically, where Elsie is a theoretical physicist trying to navigate academia, complicated relationships and Jack Smith, the physicist who appears to be determined to make her life more difficult.
And it's not just Ali Hazelwood who has realised that readers are apparently desperate for men who can explain complicated things to us.
Helen Hoang's The Kiss Quotient gives us Michael Phan, an intelligent and thoughtful hero whose relationship with Stella completely changes the way they see themselves and each other. Christina Lauren's The Soulmate Equation takes the science a step further, building an entire romance around a DNA matchmaking service.
And, as it turns out, I have a soft spot for them too. The men in my Techboys series might be fictional tech entrepreneurs rather than professors in a lab, but they're very much part of the same family of romance heroes: clever, ambitious, completely absorbed in their work and, thankfully, considerably more interested in falling in love than they are in talking about their feelings.
Take Dan in The Secret. He's the sort of man who belongs in a tech start-up world, surrounded by big ideas, complicated problems and people who are probably much more comfortable discussing business than emotions. Then Liss comes along and makes all of that considerably more complicated.
Because apparently even successful men who can navigate the tech world aren't immune to one very dangerous thing: a woman they can't stop thinking about.
So what exactly is the appeal?
I think it's the combination of brains and vulnerability.
Because the best hot nerds aren't just clever. They're competent. They're passionate about what they do. They can walk into a room and know exactly what they're talking about, but put them in front of the woman they actually care about and suddenly all that confidence disappears.
And that is where romance gets us.
There's something ridiculously satisfying about watching a man who can solve an impossible problem completely lose his train of thought because the heroine has walked into the room.
Or watching the man who seems to have everything figured out realise that there is one thing he absolutely cannot control: how he feels about her.
It also helps that romance authors have figured out that being a nerd doesn't mean being boring. Quite the opposite. Give me a man who can talk passionately about something he loves, even if I understand approximately 4% of what he's saying. There's something incredibly attractive about genuine enthusiasm, especially when it's combined with that quiet confidence that comes from knowing you're very good at what you do.
And let's be honest, romance authors rarely stop there.
The nerd usually comes with broad shoulders, a six-pack, a devastating smile and the sort of chemistry with the heroine that makes you wonder whether his PhD was actually in seduction.
Have romance books ruined us?
Probably.
Because real life doesn't necessarily work like this. The man with the PhD might not also look like he walked straight out of a romance cover. Your local software engineer probably isn't going to spend an entire evening staring at you across a room before delivering a perfectly timed declaration of love.
But that's why we read romance.
We get to have the scientist who is secretly a complete romantic. The grumpy professor who melts for exactly one woman. The genius who can understand every equation in the room but cannot understand why his heart starts racing whenever she gets close.
And maybe that's why the hot nerd has become such a staple of romance.
It's not really about the glasses or the PhD or whether he can explain quantum physics without losing us somewhere around the second sentence. It's about falling for someone's mind as much as their body, and watching a person who seems completely in control of everything discover that love is the one problem they can't solve.
So, if you're heading to Prime Video on 23rd September to see whether Adam Carlsen lives up to the version you've had in your head since reading The Love Hypothesis, I completely understand.
Just be warned.
Once you start noticing the hot nerds, they're everywhere.
And frankly, I'm not sure I want a cure.
Want to meet one of mine?
If you like your nerds clever, ambitious and very good at hiding their feelings, you might want to meet Dan for yourself.
Comments