Name: An Academic Affair
Author: Jodi McAlister

An Academic Affair by Jodi McAlister ranks as one of the most emotionally authentic slow-burn rivals-to-lovers romances I have read. Read my full review.

Jodi McAlister's An Academic Affair, Review

Publication: Atria Books, November 2025

Genre: Romance, Drama, Mystery

An Academic Affair Publisher Synopsis

From the “masterly” (The New York Times) Jodi McAlister, a charming new romance about two English professors who embark on a fake relationship…only to discover that it may be harder to pretend than they realized.

Sadie Shaw and Jonah Fisher have been academic rivals since they first crossed paths as undergraduates in the literature department thirteen years ago. Now that a highly coveted teaching opportunity has come up, their rivalry hits epic proportions. Jonah needs the job to move closer to his recently divorced sister and her children, while Sadie needs the financial security and freedom of a full-time teaching position.

When Sadie notices that the job offers partner hire, however, she hatches a plot to get them both the job. All they must do is get legally married. It’s a simple win-win solution but when sparks begin to fly, it becomes clear that despite their education, these two may not have thought this whole thing through.

Perfect for fans of Ali Hazelwood and Abby Jimenez, An Academic Affair pairs Jodi McAlister’s “smart, scorching, and emotionally resonant” (Freya Marske, author of A Restless Truth) writing and academic background to prove that she’s one of the smartest rom-com writers working today.

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My Review

Among the countless suspend-your-belief meet-cutes and sonic-speed declarations of love to be found in the romcom genre, Jodi McAlister’s execution of the rivals-to-lovers trope in An Academic Affair stands out for its grounding in reality and emotional authenticity.

The context is academia, the unglamourised real-world version. The two equal lead characters, Jonah and Sadie, are both products of that context and distinctly different upbringings, and behave accordingly. This contextualises their competitiveness, intelligent sparring and banter, changing its colour from petty to something closer to professional respect.

This respect, and then admiration, shines through in their earnest first-person alternating narrative perspectives, as over time they better understand the other’s motivations while processing their own psychological scars from the past.

“Sincerity, my research had taught me, was often seen as a vulnerability. To earnestly express a feeling was a weakness. It was part of the reason people—including, but not limited to, Professor Christian Fisher—liked to hang sh#t on romance novels. There was something inherently earnest at their heart: a sincere love and hope and joy that readers often reacted to with the same feelings, a delicate flower that provoked some people to want to crush it.”

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In turn, it’s their restraint for fear of losing this important person in their life, that believably underpins this ‘proper’ slow-burn romance fuelled by simple everyday acts of consideration and thoughtfulness. It was refreshing too that ultimately, consent and other logistical practicalities were organically woven into that part of the narrative.

Sadie and Jonah, are each plausibly cast as underdogs in different lights, but they are not the only highly endearing characters in this novel that readers become emotionally invested in. McAlister clearly has much in store for the supporting cast she’s so lovingly crafted in An Academic Affair. Or at least, I sure hope so, because a prompt release of the next title in this series is the only way I’ll be able to forgive this wonderful novel’s relatively abrupt conclusion… highly satisfying in terms of its leads, but with lots of secondary story threads left dangling.