The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center

When yet-to-be-discovered talent Emma Wheeler gets the opportunity of a lifetime to work with Hollywood giant Charlie Yates, she finally decides to do something for herself and seizes the moment — with a healthy nudge from her younger sister and her father, for whom Emma has been a round-the-clock caregiver for a decade.

Once in Los Angeles, Emma discovers that her high school friend Logan, now a Hollywood manager to big names (one of whom is Charlie Yates), has not told Charlie that Emma has been hired to help him completely rewrite his rom-com screenplay, penned as an exchange in hopes of getting his mafia movie made.

After the initial shock for them both and Emma's rash decision to hoof it to a hotel, followed by some in-between moments, Charlie ends up offering to accept Emma's help with the terrible (and unholy abomination) screenplay — a modernization of the grandmother of all rom-com films ever, It Happened One Night, which is untouchable (it won the BIG FIVE, after all).

What are the right words for effusive love of a romantic comedy book about the genre of romantic comedy films? Center's unabashed, no-holds-barred defense of rom-coms, be it a book or a film, was so utterly enjoyable. This is my first five-star book of 2024, and I cannot express how glad I am that it was this book with this story.

Center always writes exactly in a style that seems written just for me, and The Rom-Commers is no exception. She nails the humor, the characters, and the story, all with the right amount of lightness and reality. I flew through this book, and I think I'm going to buy a copy just for a reread.

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This affected neither my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.