A wanna-be Hollywood agent tries to convince a famous but blocked screenwriter that the meet-cutes in romantic comedies do work by acting them out on her own.

1.) The Hollywood insider angle. Truth is, screenwriting is not my jam. But books about people who do something I do not do—and in particular, books about characters who are assistants and just need to grab their chance and move up to the big leagues—yeah, I’m in for that. So I loved all the background here.

2.) The friendships. The friend characters in this rom-com are more present than the love interests, and it’s the protagonist’s relationship with her friends that evolves even before romance appears—in fact, if she doesn’t clue in that she’s reading their lives wrong, romance is never going to happen.

3.) That rom-com. Can we see the better love interest from the beginning? We can. Is it clear that that’s the way this is going to pan out? It is not. And that makes for fun reading.

4.) The villains. This is a rom-com with actual antagonists. Typically, I go for books where the protagonist’s worst enemy—no, only enemy—is herself, so it was fun to have some real (and not always easy to spot) villains here.

5.) The pace. This one’s for my fellow writers out there: there’s a point in this book when a whole bunch more things need to happen and we all kinda know what they are but we still need to see how they play out—and the way the author moves things zippily along to the ending works really well. And then the ending is complicated—and that’s fun, too. Satisfying. #nailedthelanding #that’snoteasy

I didn’t even MENTION that this book references just about every RomCom meet-cute movie out there—in fact that’s the theme–because that’s not my jam either. But if it’s yours, this book is definitely for you.