Birth of a Ped Mall presentation at Big Grove Iowa City

The rom-commers

by Katherine Center

FICTION Center Katherin
Fiction, Humor, Romance

"She's rewriting his love story. But can she rewrite her own? Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a screenwriter. She's spent her life studying, obsessing over, and writing romantic comedies-good ones! That win contests! But she's also been the sole caretaker for her kind-hearted dad, who needs full-time care. Now, when she gets a chance to re-write a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates-The Charlie Yates! Her personal writing god!-it's a break too big to pass up. Emma's younger sister steps in for caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for six weeks for the writing gig of a lifetime. But what is it they say? Don't meet your heroes? Charlie Yates doesn't want to write with anyone-much less "a failed, nobody screenwriter." Worse, the romantic comedy he's written is so terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus! He doesn't even care about the script-it's just a means to get a different one green-lit. Oh, and he thinks love is an emotional Ponzi scheme. But Emma's not going down without a fight. She will stand up for herself, and for rom-coms, and for love itself. She will convince him that love stories matter-even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But . . . what if that kiss is accidentally amazing? What if real life turns out to be so much . . . more real than fiction? What if the love story they're writing breaks all Emma's rules-and comes true?"--

This is the second Katherine Center book I've read, and I think I like this one even more. While her first book was all about learning new wilderness skills and unpacking her emotional "backpack," The Rom-Commers took another forced situation trope and wrote a script with it. Emma is a fish-out-of-water kind of protagonist, having been plucked from her town and flown to L.A. to write with someone way more famous than her. Sound familiar? If you've read Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy, which pairs a writer and musician and is also hysterically funny at times, you'll hear echoes of the plot setup and Hollywood setting. I feel like I laughed a bit more at Rom-Commers. Katherine Center is one of those romance writers that has mass appeal. Give me a good story, great characters, and a happy ending, and I'll fall in book-love. -Melody