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omnomicons 's review for:
Romantic Comedy
by Curtis Sittenfeld
Um, wow. I actually had to make annotations on Kindle because I had that many thoughts.
I love romance books! I haven’t read a good one in quite some time, but this premise intrigued me. I love comedy and I’ve thought about this rule of schlubby comedian bf/insanely hot gf often, so I was super excited to read this. A few problems arose. First, I felt that the set up was dragging on a bit and then looked down and noticed that TWENTY FIVE PERCENT OF THE BOOK WAS OVER. I was shocked that it had been that long without seeming to get to the central plot. We also must discuss the characterization of Noah, the male love interest. Bro made me cringe with my whole entire chest. It’s clear the author wanted him to be perfect, considering he doesn’t really demonstrate any major flaws the entire book. I’m supposed to believe a world-famous star who is hella rich and white somehow respects women more than the FEMALE PROTAGONIST does and also has every correct opinion ever… and his only fault is loving her too much… I need to practice this level of delusion in my life. Speaking of, the social justice messaging in this book is way too heavy handed. We have email exchanges between our two white MCs asking each other if they went to BLM protests and the aforementioned superstar writing a think piece about how he didn’t wanna be performative… right. What’s next, they’re going to deconstruct the model minority myth together using the example of a conveniently-Asian side character? Lastly, I hate to bring this up, but the sex scenes were atrocious. If you don’t know how to write erotica, DON’T! And if you want to learn, go to Ao3. They know what they’re doing over there.
The book had some redeeming qualities. Wokeness aside, Sally was well-characterized and I found both her sense of humor and anxiety-induced self-sabotaging extremely realistic and engaging. The dialogue was pretty witty in some places when it wasn’t preaching.
This might be the longest review I’ve ever written. The betrayal of such a good premise with fairly horrible execution really grinded (ground?) my gears (which must be obvious). All I can say is: when I found out this author was also responsible for the novel Rodham (please go look it up, you won’t be able to believe it either), everything fell into place.
Also I wish they had just killed Jerry.
I love romance books! I haven’t read a good one in quite some time, but this premise intrigued me. I love comedy and I’ve thought about this rule of schlubby comedian bf/insanely hot gf often, so I was super excited to read this. A few problems arose. First, I felt that the set up was dragging on a bit and then looked down and noticed that TWENTY FIVE PERCENT OF THE BOOK WAS OVER. I was shocked that it had been that long without seeming to get to the central plot. We also must discuss the characterization of Noah, the male love interest. Bro made me cringe with my whole entire chest. It’s clear the author wanted him to be perfect, considering he doesn’t really demonstrate any major flaws the entire book. I’m supposed to believe a world-famous star who is hella rich and white somehow respects women more than the FEMALE PROTAGONIST does and also has every correct opinion ever… and his only fault is loving her too much… I need to practice this level of delusion in my life. Speaking of, the social justice messaging in this book is way too heavy handed. We have email exchanges between our two white MCs asking each other if they went to BLM protests and the aforementioned superstar writing a think piece about how he didn’t wanna be performative… right. What’s next, they’re going to deconstruct the model minority myth together using the example of a conveniently-Asian side character? Lastly, I hate to bring this up, but the sex scenes were atrocious. If you don’t know how to write erotica, DON’T! And if you want to learn, go to Ao3. They know what they’re doing over there.
The book had some redeeming qualities. Wokeness aside, Sally was well-characterized and I found both her sense of humor and anxiety-induced self-sabotaging extremely realistic and engaging. The dialogue was pretty witty in some places when it wasn’t preaching.
This might be the longest review I’ve ever written. The betrayal of such a good premise with fairly horrible execution really grinded (ground?) my gears (which must be obvious). All I can say is: when I found out this author was also responsible for the novel Rodham (please go look it up, you won’t be able to believe it either), everything fell into place.
Also I wish they had just killed Jerry.