The Rom-Commers: A Novel
Featuring beautiful spray-painted edges with vibrant designed endpapers.
The New York Times bestselling author Katherine Center's next laugh out loud, feel good rom-com about writing your own story.
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?
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Community Reviews
Let me start by saying that I love Katherine Center and her writing! However, this book did not quite work for me
I truly love Center’s passion for positivity and desire to create the best out of every terrible situation. I deeply appreciate her work to educate herself on the traumatic topics she writes about. My concern is that she seems to delight in writing only about extreme trauma. She has created a niche for herself similar to Colleen Hoover, an author known for tragedy porn. In my mind, I can imagine Center writing beautiful, poignant stories founded on her beautiful perspective of the world and independent from extremes. At this point, I doubt it would occur to her to try.
Perhaps it is due to the contrasting foundation of trauma, but her earnestness is overplayed. Her earnestness wouldn’t be so overwhelming if she spent less time in her character’s minds over-explaining their thoughts in-between dialogue. Every chapter in these thought breaks, their stances and thoughts are repeated in what feels like the same breath, or rather, the same winding internal monologue. Often in these ramblings in each of Catherine’s novels, I get lost in the monologue and forget what was actually happening in the scene—so much so that I have to flip back to refresh myself. Admittedly, Center’s habit of diving into an internal monologue in the middle of a scene is quite observant of how we exist in our own minds alongside the reality we live in. It’s just unfortunate that it’s executed poorly and serves to interrupt the story more than bring it to life.
Center’s rambling style comes across the way that the person speaks. The repetition, the deep emotional expressions, the bubbliness that seems to froth from the page. I feel like if this was honed, it could make her a stronger writer. We’re often drawn to writing that speaks to us like a friend. It makes us feel comfortable. I believe that that is what Center is aiming to do. She writes to us like a friend, like we, her audience, her friends to her characters. Her characters end up feeling like beloved friends that I want to shake to get to the point. Their earnestness is endearing, but intolerable with the sheer bulk of it. Sometimes I’ve wondered if this is Center’s attempt at fluffing up the story to meet a target page count. I want the earnestness and I want the affable, comforting space inside the minds of her characters. I suppose what I want most is variety. I want to be freed from each and ending scene so that I can spend more time there and get to know the characters better. I want to see them build deeper connections and exhibit further growth. I want to see how they think and act in different situations. I want to nod my head in agreement, but not vigorously while thinking “I agreed with you two pages ago”.
I believe Center is capable of this, but she likely won’t get the feedback to grow in her writing since her novels are now successful in her team likely sees little need for her to evolve. The end, I’m going to keep reading Center’s novels when I need a spot of positivity in my life. I’m also going to keep feeling frustrated and disappointed when I do. Ultimately, I can only blame myself for this decision.
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