Book Lovers: Emily Henry’s Charming Meta Romance for the Hallmark Cynics

It’s been a while since a romance novel made me burst out cackling on the second page, but Emily Henry has done it: Her heroine Nora (named for Ephron, of course) Stephens introduces herself by way of a Hallmark movie formula—basically, You know how every male lead in one of these movies has an ice queen girlfriend barking into the phone from her Peloton for him to come back to the city and leave behind idyllic country life? That’s me, I’m the Peloton bitch.
It’s an ambitious move, centering her latest contemporary romance on the kind of person that Hallmark and Lifetime (and, increasingly, Netflix) have long taught us is the antihero. But in doing so, Henry has outdone even herself by presenting a delightfully prickly enemies-to-lovers romance that brutally takes apart the Hallmark Happily Ever After and sensitively revises it into something more realistic yet still swoon-worthy.
Nora is a very particular breed of New Yorker, a cutthroat literary agent whose star client Dusty Fielding happens to write the kind of small-town romance that is her personal kryptonite. And while she’s such a finely-honed archetype of HBIC, I still felt incredible solidarity for her—as someone who once launched into a screaming diatribe on behalf of Idina Menzel’s character in Disney’s Enchanted (whose only sin was not being doe-eyed Amy Adams and therefore Patrick Dempsey’s polar-opposite love interest) because my college boyfriend had also deemed me the anti-soulmate of his personal movie.
It’s never fun to be the not-enough girlfriend, and Nora has had it happen four times. It’s completely understandable that this career badass would be terrified whenever a new beau goes on a work trip to some idyllic place that’s not New York City—and why it’s so difficult for her to leave the Big Apple for even a weekend trip.
The only person Nora would even consider departing the city for—and only during publishing’s slow season in August—is her younger sister Libby, who’s long-established in her own HEA with a doting husband, two rambunctious girls, and a third kiddo on the way. Libby convinces Nora to join her in visiting dreamy Sunshine Falls, which happens to be the setting for Dusty’s bestsellers. Only, it seems as if Dusty has taken some creative liberties with the town…and there’s another black-clad New Yorker who sticks out as sorely as Nora.
Surly book editor Charlie Lastra, thorn in Nora’s side since a mutual bad first impression years ago, is inexplicably summering in this random North Carolina town as well. And when they wind up in an unexpected Dusty collaboration, which conflicts with Libby’s pre-baby bucket list, Nora finds herself pulled between the most important person in her life—and someone who has the potential to become a close second.
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