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mariawheeler 's review for:
Romantic Comedy
by Curtis Sittenfeld
“Aren’t we all just looking for someone to talk about everything with? Someone worth the effort of telling our stories and opinions to, whose stories and opinions we actually want to hear?”
Over the years as I've become more and more of a reader, I've found that I enjoy books more when I go in totally blind. Only a few times has this back-fired and unfortunately, this book was one of those cases. Although I frequently found myself laughing at the banter and funny one-liners featured in the novel, the plot of the second half of the book was so underwhelming that I couldn't justify giving this book a higher rating, even when I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the story.
The first part of the story is painstakingly dedicated to understanding the job of our main character, Sally Milz. Sally works as a writer at a fictional version of SNL, called 'The Night Owls' or TNO, and for the first half of the book, the readers are taken through a highly detailed week of the daily operations at TNO. Even though some parts felt mundane and draw-out I absolutely loved reading about Sally's career and seeing the passion she has for her work. I also really appreciated the slow pacing of the main romance as it felt genuine and well done.
However, after this week - and half of the book - the story jumps forward two years to March 2020, with COVID-19 taking on a central part of the story. From here out, the readers are constantly being reminded of the pandemic and the struggles that many people faced. If you are like me, books that mention real-world issues really rub me the wrong way and every time the book mentioned COVID I physically cringed.
Then, in the second half of the book, I felt as though the romance was extremely rushed, which easily could have been handled better and more acceptably if the author hadn't spent the entire first half of the book dedicated to building the career of our main character. I also felt like Sally was two different people in the first and second half of the book, she was extremely confident and established when we were introduced to her character, and then, halfway through she becomes highly critical of her looks and very insecure. I think this may be a personal preference, however, one of my least favourite character archetypes is the insecure middle-aged woman (who usually doesn't even need to be insecure, I will add), as I find this to be a trope that is somehow overly-analyzed yet almost always done in an insulting and underdeveloped way.
In the end, halfway through this book I was convinced I'd be handing out another 4-star, however, the second half was just so poorly done that I have to settle for a 2-star rating. Maybe this is just me, but I think 'COVID-19' should be listed under trigger warnings, as I sincerely hope that I will never have to read another pandemic book again.
2.5 ⭐
Over the years as I've become more and more of a reader, I've found that I enjoy books more when I go in totally blind. Only a few times has this back-fired and unfortunately, this book was one of those cases. Although I frequently found myself laughing at the banter and funny one-liners featured in the novel, the plot of the second half of the book was so underwhelming that I couldn't justify giving this book a higher rating, even when I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the story.
The first part of the story is painstakingly dedicated to understanding the job of our main character, Sally Milz. Sally works as a writer at a fictional version of SNL, called 'The Night Owls' or TNO, and for the first half of the book, the readers are taken through a highly detailed week of the daily operations at TNO. Even though some parts felt mundane and draw-out I absolutely loved reading about Sally's career and seeing the passion she has for her work. I also really appreciated the slow pacing of the main romance as it felt genuine and well done.
However, after this week - and half of the book - the story jumps forward two years to March 2020, with COVID-19 taking on a central part of the story. From here out, the readers are constantly being reminded of the pandemic and the struggles that many people faced. If you are like me, books that mention real-world issues really rub me the wrong way and every time the book mentioned COVID I physically cringed.
Then, in the second half of the book, I felt as though the romance was extremely rushed, which easily could have been handled better and more acceptably if the author hadn't spent the entire first half of the book dedicated to building the career of our main character. I also felt like Sally was two different people in the first and second half of the book, she was extremely confident and established when we were introduced to her character, and then, halfway through she becomes highly critical of her looks and very insecure. I think this may be a personal preference, however, one of my least favourite character archetypes is the insecure middle-aged woman (who usually doesn't even need to be insecure, I will add), as I find this to be a trope that is somehow overly-analyzed yet almost always done in an insulting and underdeveloped way.
In the end, halfway through this book I was convinced I'd be handing out another 4-star, however, the second half was just so poorly done that I have to settle for a 2-star rating. Maybe this is just me, but I think 'COVID-19' should be listed under trigger warnings, as I sincerely hope that I will never have to read another pandemic book again.
2.5 ⭐