Katherine Center's THE ROM-COMMERS

Thanks to partners NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC of Katherine Center's The Rom-Commers. The book will be published on Tuesday!

Reading Katherine Center’s newest book has become a favorite summer tradition for me. Her books center on such believably real characters in such lovely, dreamy, and sincerely funny circumstances. The Rom-Commers checked all of those boxes for me.

Emma Wheeler’s life is dominated by two things: (1) caring for her family, particularly her father, after a tragic accident that changed their lives forever, and (2) screenwriting. Well, screenwriting rom-coms.

Emma has made choices that have affected her career and her freedom to make sure that her younger sister has every option she could dream of as she emerges from college and to keep her father safe, which means 24-7 care.

So, when she’s unexpectedly given a chance to ghost write (and overhaul) a rom-com screenplay by her idol, Charlie Yates, she’s both exhilarated and reluctant: her sister has an internship opportunity that Emma doesn’t want her to pass up, and she can’t leave her dad.

This situation, right from the beginning, is communicated with such vividness that I felt every facet of Emma’s agonizing choice: follow the dream that she’s pushed down for so long or keep to the narrow path that she’s carved out for herself.

It takes a push from her family—and her high school ex-boyfriend, Logan, now a successful Hollywood agent—to get Emma on the plane to meet and work with Charlie Yates.

And then she finds out that (despite what Logan told her!) Charlie doesn’t want a ghost writer and doesn’t even know that she’s coming.

This premise spins out in satisfying ways. Of course, Emma ends up co-writing with Charlie, schooling him on the merits of the rom-coms that he so scorns and giving him a very honest take on the problems she sees with his draft. Their working relationship has ups and downs, misunderstandings and miscommunications both deliberate and not, and the ways that their romantic relationships develop in parallel to their screenplay are delightful.

But it’s the characters that are the standout here, the ways that Emma and Charlie (and Emma’s dad and sister) force themselves to work toward happiness again and again, work toward believing in and living with love.

I always appreciate reading Center’s acknowledgments, where she shares the inspirations for each story and the books and research that informed her novels. Her dedication to and advocacy for romance is a beautiful thing, and it’s borne out, again and again, in her books.

The Rom-Commers is a beautiful tribute to rom-coms and to writing and to movies, and it’s a wonderful novel about the ways we have to believe in and put effort into pursuing love. It’s a book that will satisfy Center’s readers, old and new.

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