Chemistry Lessons Review: Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A warm, low-angst friends-to-lovers romance between two women who’ve been best friends since kindergarten, held back by a stream of chemistry puns and a sweetness that some readers find too light to hold them.

Best for: Readers who want a gentle comfort read with a believable slide from friendship into love, and who don’t need big conflict or a lot of on-page heat to stay invested.

Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5: open door, per romance.io)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.8/5: a 3.97 Goodreads average across about 2,570 ratings, with “too sweet” as the main complaint)

Tropes: Friends to lovers, best friends since childhood, fake dates that turn real, slow burn, low angst, dual POV, found family, bisexual lead, workplace (high school), estranged parent.

Chemistry Lessons is a standalone contemporary lesbian romance by Jae, published by Ylva in July 2021 and filed as book five of Ylva’s loose Unexpected Love line, about a high school chemistry teacher and her cafeteria-worker best friend who agree to go on three dates to prove, once and for all, that there’s nothing romantic between them.

It sits at a 3.97 average across roughly 2,570 Goodreads ratings, and it won the 2022 Goldie (GCLS) for mid-length contemporary romance and was a Lambda Literary finalist. The reviews are friendly but not unanimous: the same softness that half the readers call comforting is exactly what the other half call thin. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Chemistry Lessons About?

This is a friends-to-lovers book in the purest sense. There’s no rivalry, no secret, no fake relationship to hide behind. The whole engine is two women who already love each other working out whether that love is the romantic kind, and what they’d risk by finding out. That makes it a natural fit for anyone browsing low-angst romance, because the stakes are emotional rather than dramatic.

Regan teaches chemistry and has a scientist’s habit of testing everything. Kylie works in the school cafeteria and carries a family history that still shapes how much she lets people in. The story alternates between their points of view, so you see both of them noticing things they’ve decided not to notice, which is most of the fun.

What Makes This Low-Angst Friends-to-Lovers Romance Work

The friendship comes first: Readers keep pointing out that the shift from best friends to lovers feels believable, because the book builds it on decades of shared history rather than sudden attraction.
The low-angst promise is real: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books called it a book with “zero angst,” and “low angst” and “feel-good” are the most common words in the Goodreads reviews.
Ordinary jobs, ordinary lives: A teacher and a cafeteria worker aren’t the usual romance leads, and several reviewers single that out as a pleasure.
Jae’s shared universe: Characters from Wrong Number, Right Woman drop in, and around a third of the reviews I checked mention the cameos warmly.
A slow burn that pays off: The three-date setup gives the book a clear shape, and readers like watching each date chip away at the “we have no chemistry” story the two women have been telling for years.

Book Synopsis

Regan and Kylie have been inseparable since they were five. Regan grew up to teach high school chemistry. Kylie works in the cafeteria at the same school and has built a quiet life that doesn’t ask too much of her. The people around them have decided they belong together. Both women find this hilarious, because they’re sure there’s nothing there.

When the teasing gets to be too much, Regan proposes an experiment. They’ll go on three proper dates, treat them like real dates, and then report back to everyone that the chemistry simply isn’t there. It’s a neat plan. It’s also the kind of plan that only works if neither of them notices anything during the experiment, and the first date already doesn’t go quite the way the hypothesis predicted.

Running underneath the dates is Kylie’s past. Her father is a former lawyer who went to prison when she was in high school, and her family fell apart in the years that followed. When he reappears, she has to decide how much of that history she’s willing to let back in, and how much she’s willing to let Regan see. So the question the book keeps asking isn’t really whether these two are attracted to each other. It’s whether they’re brave enough to risk the most important friendship either of them has on the answer.

My Review

A quick note on method first: this is an LRR evidence review. I’ve built it from the Goodreads, StoryGraph, romance.io and Amazon data, the specialist reviews and a close read of what readers actually say, rather than claiming a fresh read of my own. With that said, the thing this book gets most right is the premise. Friends to lovers lives or dies on whether you believe the friendship, and a pair who’ve known each other since kindergarten gives Jae a head start that most romances have to fake. Readers say the shift feels earned, and that’s the hardest part of the trope.

The second strength is the mood. On StoryGraph, 87% of reviewers tag it lighthearted and 54% funny, and only a sliver pick tense or sad. That lines up with the Smart Bitches review, which gave it a B+ and recommended it to anyone who wants a low-angst story. It’s the kind of book people describe in terms of how it made them feel, and one Goodreads reader put it as “so much oxytocin was released in my brain.” If you’ve come to this from our low-angst lesbian romance guide, that’s the experience you’re shopping for.

Where it struggles is the same place it shines. The most repeated criticism, from five or so independent reviewers, is that it’s too sweet: not enough conflict, not enough friction, nothing much standing between the two women except their own nerves. “A little too sweet for my liking” is a fair summary of that camp. The second complaint is the chemistry jokes. A handful of readers, and the Smart Bitches reviewer too, felt the puns piled up in the second half. One reader also found Kylie and Regan hard to tell apart, which is a real risk in a dual-POV book built on two people who know each other so well.

The expectation to reset is about what “low angst” means here. The romance is gentle, but the backstory isn’t weightless. Kylie’s father went to prison, and her mother died of an overdose that some readers describe as a suicide. It’s past, not on the page as a present-day crisis, but StoryGraph users flag death of a parent and suicide more than anything else. So if “low angst” is what drew you, you’ll get it in the relationship. If grief is what you’re avoiding, read the content notes first.

My honest note: A sweet, well-built friends-to-lovers romance that trades tension for comfort. If you need conflict to turn the pages, this will feel slight. If you want two people who already love each other figuring out the rest, it’s a lovely way to spend an evening.

Element	In Chemistry Lessons
Central relationship	Regan and Kylie: a high school chemistry teacher and the school’s cafeteria worker, best friends since kindergarten
Core tropes	Friends to lovers, childhood best friends, three experimental dates, slow burn, low angst
Setting	A US high school and the life the two women have built around it
Heat level	3/5: open door, per romance.io
Series	Standalone (Ylva’s Unexpected Love line, book 5), with a short free story, The Principal’s Office, as a coda
Content notes	Death of a parent (an overdose some readers describe as suicide), parental incarceration, drug abuse, grief, abandonment, on-page sex

How Spicy Is Chemistry Lessons?

It’s a 3/5. romance.io puts it at three out of five, “open door,” from 22 reader ratings, and I Heart SapphFic lands in the same place with a “Medium” rating for sex scenes with mildly graphic description. Readers agree the heat is there but not the point. One describes a single chapter of sexual content; another calls it hot by Jae’s standards. The build-up is the slow part, so don’t expect early payoff.

There’s nothing on the heat side worth flagging in advance. No reviewer names kink content or consent concerns, and StoryGraph’s sexual-content tags are split between graphic and moderate from a very small number of users. If you like this level, Hooked on You and Love Next Door sit at the same 3/5 open-door band.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want friends to lovers done slowly and believably, you’re after a comfort read with very little drama, you enjoy ordinary working lives on the page, and you already like Jae’s warm, low-drama style.

You may want to skip it if: you need real conflict to stay invested, puns and science jokes grate on you, you want high heat early, or a parent’s death in the backstory is a hard no right now.

In short: It’s comfort over tension, and it knows it.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

There’s no viral moment behind this book and, as far as I could find, no BookTok push. I couldn’t check Reddit reliably for this review, so I can’t speak to it. What it does have is a steady, award-driven backlist life. It picked up a Goldie, a Lambda Literary finalist spot, an IPPY silver and a Rainbow Awards runner-up, and I Heart SapphFic readers voted it into their annual awards in 2022 and 2023. It sits near the top of Jae’s own list of sapphic books set in a school. The audiobook, narrated by Abby Craden for Tantor and released in February 2022, runs 6 hours 30 minutes on Libro.fm, and Lez Review Books gave it five stars, saying Craden captures the tone “perfectly.”

Prefer audio? Listen to Chemistry Lessons on Libro.fm, the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The low angst comes up first and most often, in roughly a dozen of the reviews I read, usually with “feel-good” alongside it. Next is the shared universe: readers love seeing Denny and Eliza from Wrong Number, Right Woman again. Then the friendship itself, with several reviewers saying the move from best friends to lovers is believable rather than convenient. A smaller group enjoys the chemistry wordplay, which matters, because it means the puns are a taste question rather than a flaw everyone agrees on. StoryGraph backs up the character focus too: 76% call it character driven and 90% say the characters are lovable.

What readers argue about and complain about: Sweetness, above everything. About five reviewers say there’s too little conflict, and at least one says plainly she never expected to find a book too sweet. Second, the puns: three or so reviewers, plus Smart Bitches, felt the science jokes were overdone by the back half. Third, and quieter, a reader who wanted more depth from the father storyline, and another who found the two leads’ voices too similar. The real split is the first one. The readers who love it and the readers who shrug are describing the same book; they just want different things from a romance.

The standalone question worth asking first: It’s complete. The romance resolves with a happy ending, and nothing else is required to follow it, although you’ll catch more of the cameos if you’ve read Wrong Number, Right Woman first. Jae later added The Principal’s Office, a short story of about 4,000 words, for readers who want a little more of Regan and Kylie. If this one works for you, Jae’s Just a Touch Away is the higher-rated next step at 4.28 on Goodreads, and Wrong Number, Right Woman sits at 4.15.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Chemistry Lessons low angst?

Yes. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books called it a book with zero angst, and low angst is the most common praise in reader reviews. The main tension comes from Kylie’s estranged father, not from the couple.

How spicy is Chemistry Lessons?

A 3/5. romance.io rates it open door, and I Heart SapphFic calls the heat medium, with mildly graphic sex scenes. Readers say the heat is present but not the focus.

Does Chemistry Lessons have a happy ending?

Yes. Regan and Kylie get a happy ending, and Jae later added a short story, The Principal’s Office, that checks in on them.

Do I need to read Wrong Number, Right Woman first?

No. Chemistry Lessons stands alone. Characters from Wrong Number, Right Woman make cameos, so reading it first adds a little extra pleasure, but it isn’t required.

Is there an audiobook of Chemistry Lessons?

Yes. Abby Craden narrates it for Tantor, and it runs about 6 hours 30 minutes. Lez Review Books gave the audio five stars.

If You Loved Chemistry Lessons, Read These Next

Start with Wrong Number, Right Woman, Jae’s other low-angst slow burn, which shares characters and an even gentler tone. Then try Hooked on You for the same quiet, very low-conflict feel with older leads, and Love Next Door if you want friends to lovers with a fake-dating twist at the same heat. For more, browse our low-angst lesbian romance books and the full Book Reviews archive.

The Bottom Line

Chemistry Lessons wants to be the coziest version of friends to lovers, and mostly it is. The friendship is believable, the mood is warm and the slow burn has a clear shape. On the other side, the conflict is thin, the puns wear out their welcome for some readers and the backstory is heavier than the cover suggests. It’s worth it for anyone who wants comfort and a gentle payoff more than drama. Check Chemistry Lessons on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Chemistry Lessons ranks as an award-winning comfort read in contemporary sapphic romance. It’s warm and believable, held back by low stakes and a joke that runs long. Read it for the friendship rather than for tension.