Intermediate Thermodynamics by Susannah Nix

Narrated by Caitlin Kelly

Intermediate Thermodynamics is billed as a romantic comedy. I think that’s the new term for “chick lit”. It was amusing in places but either all of the humour did not work for me, or it wasn’t all that funny. I think chick lit fits the book better as a descriptor than contemporary romance. There was a romance and it did end in a HEA but it wasn’t as large a part of the book as I’d have liked.

Esther is an aerospace engineer (literally a rocket scientist). She works in a company which designs and builds satellites for commercial use. She is up against sexism and the “boys club” at work. She is a blunt and prickly character. However, it is pointed out in the book that when she is criticised for being “aggressive” at work, the same behaviour from the man would probably draw praise. Actually, that part was interesting to me because the criticism of her by her supervisor was both accurate and sexist.

Esther’s next-door neighbour is Jonathan. He is a graduate student in a screenwriting program. She doesn’t like him. He smokes on his balcony and the smell comes in through her own balcony into her flat. He leaves his washing in the communal dryer too often. He parks next to her and doesn’t always stay in the lines. He wears a beanie and he’s scruffy.

However, Esther’s best friend, Jinny, has just broken up with a douchebag. Said douchebag has been gaslighting Jinny for months and Jinny has finally kicked him to the kerb. However, Esther is concerned he will weasel his way back into Jinny’s good graces. So she comes up with a plan to get Jinny a rebound guy, to prove to Jinny that she’s better off without her ex.

When Jonathan approaches Esther for a critique of his science fiction script, she makes a deal with him: He will take Jinny on at least three dates and she will provide feedback on his script.

It is an unusual setup for romance. Jonathan kisses Jinny before he ever kisses Esther. (And the kissing of Esther is a loooooong time coming.) But as Esther and Jonathan bond over his screenplay/s they become friends.

Of course, because Esther and Jonathan belong together, Jinny and Jonathan don’t have chemistry. But Jinny doesn’t know about the setup and it’s against the BFF code to date or sleep with your best friend’s ex so that is a barrier for Jonathan and Esther to have a HEA.

Esther is also very risk averse. She has hookups to scratch a sexual itch but is not a big believer in love. She deliberately chooses guys with whom she could have no future and that way, she avoids all mess and hurt.

Jonathan is sweet and earnest and vulnerable. It is definitely Esther who is the alpha of the relationship. But Jonathan does teach her about emotional openness and the worth of it over the course of the story.

I admit I struggled a little with the whole “helping with the screenplay” thing. I understood why Jonathan would get advice about the science from Esther. But I didn’t get why it was Esther who was advising him about character development. Jonathan is a graduate student. Shouldn’t his teachers be doing that kind of thing? Or better, shouldn’t he know that already??

Still, this was the device that kept up the interaction between Esther and Jonathan and enabled them to slowly build a relationship.

Of course everything falls apart; Esther is in trouble at work, her mother in Seattle is asking for more money, her relationships are falling apart. Esther has to make big changes to get her HEA.

The story is told entirely from Esther’s point of view, in the third person, so the listener gets to know Jonathan only through her eyes and by his dialogue. While he has an arc, it is mainly Esther’s story, with Jonathan along for the ride.

I give credit for a somewhat unusual pairing; Esther is the professional with the stable job, the boss in the relationship really. Jonathan is the idealistic dreamer, mostly content to go with the flow. In many ways they are opposites but over time, they do find they have important things in common too.

The narration was fairly good. I liked the differentiation in the voices between Esther and Jinny and it was no trouble telling Esther and Jonathan apart either. Jonathan’s voice wasn’t super deep but it was distinct enough. I also enjoyed the character of Yemi, who is a colleague of Esther’s and apparently not neurotypical. He is a good friend to Esther and I enjoyed his secondary romance, even though it did not take up a lot of listening time.

It was difficult for me to tell whether Caitlin Kelly wasn’t the greatest at delivering humour and perhaps portrayed Esther a little too lacking in affect, or if this was a fair reading on the text. I haven’t listened to Ms. Kelly narrate before so I have no baseline. Perhaps had I read the book rather than listened, I’d have found Esther more sympathetic? But perhaps not.

The romance is a slow build but what there was of it was sweet. I particularly liked the emotion Ms. Kelly brought into Jonathan’s declarations later in the book. And, Esther did open up emotionally somewhat over the course of the story – in my ears as well on the page.

As a contemporary romance, I found Intermediate Thermodynamics a little light on but it works well as chick lit (oh how I dislike that term!) and I did enjoy the STEM heroine paired with the artsy hero.

Kaetrin