"An Academic Affair" did such an excellent job of taking well worn romance tropes and subverting them just enough to produce this warm embrace of a novel. Sadie and Jonah have been professional rivals throughout their career, from first meeting at university to where the novel starts with them competing for the same job. I loved the insights about academic life, based on the author's own experience. The narrative is split between Sadie and Jonah's point of view and Jodie McAlister gave them their own distinct cadence. Jonah's chapters even included citations like an academic paper and lots of lovely quotations from literature. I really hope that there will be more novels from this burgeoning community as a few other couples were teased.

I'm very torn in writing this review. On the one hand, I enjoyed the fighting between Sadie and Jonah, and I loved Jonah's relationship with his sister. I also enjoyed the very real depiction of nepotism and privilege in academic research and how frustrating it can be.
I did find myself initially rooting for Jonah and Sadie, but the novel just seemed to drag a little and I had to stop myself from skimming pages to get through chapters that felt like filler. It also felt slightly repetitive about the baggage that they both carried.