Tag: funny

Back After This by Linda Holmes (Rom-com)

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 4/5 Story: 5/5

I really enjoyed this (very) funny, well-written, and actually insightful rom-com written by the author of Evvie Drake Starts Over. I like rom-coms when they are clever, witty, and most of all — NOT STUPID. I can’t stress that last quality enough. This was a perfect, read-in-one-sitting exemplar of exactly what I love in a rom-com and perfect for this stressful season.

Cecily is a podcast producer who agrees (think forced, bribed, coerced) to star in a podcast about modern dating with the help of a dating guru / popular Influencer. An introverted audio nerd by nature, this takes her so far out of her comfort zone that she feels impending implosion looming everywhere. Plenty of (well-paced, well-written) comedy follows, but I was impressed that she gained some real insight into aspects of her own personality that were getting in the way of her getting more of what she wanted from life. While I can’t bear to read about physical makeovers, psychological makeovers — are fascinating.

As an aside, I learned interesting components of podcast production (and marketing) which were new to me and described with a depth that showed true understanding on the part of the author (pet peeve: I hate when characters have a huge passion for something but then never do or think about it in any meaningful way).

A cross between Lori Gottlieb and Curtis Sittenfeld — the best of them both!

Some great quotes:
“I wondered exactly where that research had been done. Presumably the University of Unsupported Hunches, where I was guessing she was a tenured professor.”

“He took me to an ax-throwing bar on our first date, and he was very good at ax-throwing, which I suppose impressed me, because you never know when you might need a guy who can kill a monster in a cartoon dungeon.”

“But we finally agreed on a loose top that fell off one of my shoulders and a pair of pants that had just enough stretch to accommodate my newly emphasized hips without making me look and feel like a vacuum-sealed pork shoulder, ready for a sous vide bath.”

“He had the facial symmetry and the perfectly shaped dark hair of a Lego prince.”

“I tried to dig my smile out of the recesses of my personality.”

“It made for a long dinner, learning quite that much about Andrew’s gym routine.”

Thank you to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on February 25th, 2025.

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord (YA)

These days I’m in great need of light, happy, books.  This is a great one for that!

Pepper is a Nashville transplant, tagging along with her mom — the founder of the very successful “Big League Burger” franchise. Jack is the secret genius behind Weazel, the social platform with anonymous interactions which “pop” with your pal’s identity after significant chatting (pop-goes-the-weasel, get it?) and heir-apparent of his family’s deli — Girl Cheesing. Both attend the elite Stone Hall Academy, have a keen sense of snark, and are devoted to their family businesses. Both are also engaged in a Twitter war over competing grilled cheese product — and it’s gone viral.

Funny, as “cute” as advertised, well-written, and far more surprising than I expected. A fun read.

Quotes:

“Just the infinite, suffocating void of trying to navigate the world without my phone in my pocket.”
“Jack is the kind of person who fills silences. The kind of person who doesn’t necessarily command attention, but always seems to sneak it from you.”
“… wondering how someone can be so aggressively seventeen and seventy-five at the same time…”
“I’m competing for Ivy League admissions with legacies who probably descended down from the original Yale bulldog.”
“I know she went to high school in the nineties, but that does not excuse this fundamental misunderstanding of how teenage social interaction works.”
“There’s nothing quite as awkward as living in a shadow that is quite literally the same shape as yours.”

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on January 21st, 2020.