People are way freakier than we acknowledge. Attraction has to do with so many things besides appearance. Hot eventually gets boring but funny never does.
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic ComedyAnother of my pet peeves is that the female characters used to be all sort of cutesy, like having flour on their nose after they baked cookies and not knowing it. And now they’re all a mess, like waking up really hungover and getting fired. I want to create characters who aren’t flawless but also aren’t ridiculous or incompetent at life.
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy
Sally is a writer on a comedy sketch show called The Night Owls. She is very good at her job because she is talented and because she has a razor-thin margin of error. She loves her job, which is a good thing because she gives herself over to it completely from August until May each year. Aside from a guy with whom she hooks up every few weeks, she hasn’t been in a relationship since she and her ex-husband split up ten years earlier.
Sally is mostly content in her own writing world until a talented, super-famous, attractive, and friendly musician comes in as the week’s host. At one point, he seeks Sally out to help him refine a sketch idea, and they share a moment in her office. For the rest of the week, Sally is hyper aware of where he (Noah) is at any given time, and that alone bothers her immensely. He is a rich rock star who could date anyone. So why is he smiling at her like that? Why does he look directly at her during rehearsal when he sings his latest love song?
Women like Sally do not date heartthrobs like Noah Brewster, or so she thinks. She doesn’t want a relationship and she also doesn’t want to be his latest hookup. But she does want something from him even though she mentally slaps herself whenever she imagines what it would be like to be with him.
Things happen, words are said, and Sally shoots herself in the foot before anything can actually begin. So, when Noah messages her later, they strike up a very safe, very comfortable discourse via email.
I loved the first half of the book as it took me through the day-by-day activities and craziness that goes into a Saturday Night Live episode. There are some side plots with Sally’s colleagues which are mildly interesting, but not really. Even though Sally loves it, I cringed through most of her castmates’ jokes, even when they were just joking around with her. It made it hard to root for any of them, with the exception of Viv, her best friend on the show.
Noah, the love interest, was too perfect. I liked that he knew who he was and didn’t let fame get to him, but I could really relate to Sally as she thought, “Why is he into me?” Other than confessing he’d been infatuated with her from the day they met, he seemed way too good to be true. Sally trying to extract herself from a relationship out of fear felt very real. However, she was super super annoying. I would have liked to have made her a bit more sympathetic or made Noah a tiny bit vain or unlikeable.
What I’m trying to say is that it took a long, long time for me to root for them.
I was mostly happy with the ending, and the characters mostly behaved like normal people, albeit they both worked in entertainment and had gobs of money.
The writing was crisp and enjoyable, but I’m not compelled to try another book by this author.
CW for discussions of despair during and after the 2016 US election.