by Penny Reid
First published 2025
Sarah Chen thought graduate school would be all lab work and late nights with textbooks. She planned to keep her head down, finish her research, and avoid complications. Then she meets Dr. Marcus Webb, the brilliant new faculty member whose unconventional teaching methods turn her ordered world upside down. When Sarah gets assigned to his research team, she finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew about cellular biology and about herself. Marcus challenges her assumptions in the lab and outside it, pushing her to think beyond textbook answers. Sarah must choose between the safe path she mapped out and the uncertain territory of real discovery. As experiments yield surprising results and feelings grow complicated, she learns that the most important lessons happen outside the classroom.
Genres: fiction, biology, contemporary-romance, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
572 pages · Paperback · Cipher-Naught