Romantic Comedy: Reese's Book Club: A Novel

The protagonist of this story is Sally Milz, a writer for a "Saturday Night Live" type of show that airs on late night tv. Her job consists of a crazy week leading up to the show, going over comedy sketches with celebrity guest hosts and culminates with the requisite Saturday night party after every show. Her love life is not great, but she is practically married to the show and her closest friends are her co-workers.Sally creates funny skits about what bothers her about society in general. She has noticed that some of her average, nerdy male co-workers have relationships with gorgeous top models and famous actresses and decides to make her latest skit about a plain, but intelligent woman like herself, in good shape , but no runway model, who attracts the amorous attention of a devastatingly handsome man. The comedy is about how society approves of the schlumpy guy with a beautiful girl ("good for him!") but sees the pairing of a plain girl with a gorgeous guy as ridiculous (What does he see in her??")It happens that the next guest host is a world famous romantic pop singer, who is also the most attractive man she has ever seen in real life, Noah Brewster. Sally and Noah work closely on the skits for the next show and develop a closeness which makes Sally uncomfortable, so she says something in her usual snarky way that puts him off.I liked the witty dialogue between Sally, her co-workers and Noah. It was very interesting to learn how a Saturday Night Live type show (called "The Night Owls" in this book) is developed and performed.The second part of the book takes place when the taping of the show is suspended during Covid-19. Some friendships deepened and some marriages collapse. The characters growth and happy ending makes this an entertaining book to read for Valentine's Day!

I very much enjoyed this book! I really debated on my star rating and just a couple small things made me knock it down by half a star. 1. It’s a 300 page book composed of a Prologue, three chapters, and an Epilogue. Only. Three. Chapters. I’m someone who doesn’t like to stop reading until I reach the end of a chapter so it bugged me when I had to stop at an odd point. BUT. I did like the format of the chapters. Each was a different year and gave good perspective of the timeline. And I loved that chapter two was entirely composed of emails. I have a soft spot of books written through emails, messages, etc. 2. Certain parts were very liberal, especially when it comes to the pandemic. Anyone who knows me is aware that I am a very conservative person. I have nothing against the other side (so please don’t take this the wrong way) and I am happy when people give their views in respectful ways, but I don’t always like when it’s given in a book. For me, it makes a book less relatable and more like it has a political agenda. I prefer just keeping political opinions separate. But it wasn’t overbearing in this book so I did like that.I loved the relationship between Sally and Noah. It’s just so genuine and real. Sally portraying her insecurities and her reactions to different situations was something I really connected with. Their relationship is one that I know I personally strive to have in my lifetime. True love. *sigh* my hopeless romantic heart just swoons!

I've seen some mixed reviews on this one, and I can definitely see where every side comes from. I personally enjoyed this one for the most part, but definitely wouldn't call it anything super ground breaking by any means. It was fun to experience and get a behind the scenes feel of what real life shows like SNL are like. However, I do feel like there was maybe a little too much background and detail given, which maybe the author should have focused a little more on building up a more realistic connection and development of the relationship between the two main characters. I mostly enjoyed Sally as the female lead - but while she was a strong character in some scenarios, there were other times where she was just way too unconfident and self sabotage-y, which became irritating at times. I'm not the biggest fan of the narrative when the lead is their own biggest obstacle 🙄 But I did like that the author seemed to make her a "real" character. She was very relatable in that aspect. And her uh, anxieties, when it came to how one relieves themselves when in a new relationship was a very humorous bit 😆The other bit of criticism I have is that the author was very forward with where her stance is on a lot of real life topics, and this book mentions a LOT about Covid. That kind of thing doesn't always bother me, but to have a good chunk of the book to be taking place during Covid and lock downs kind of ruined the magic of disappearing into a fictional story for me, and it was just too much for me. Having to deal with that in real life was good enough for me, I'd rather not read about it when I'm trying to escape reality, thanks. And it just wasn't necessary, there could have been other scenarios used as a catalyst to get the same story across. For that reason, I can understand where a lot of people did not enjoy this one.All in all, was an enjoyable read, but not one I'd recommend to everyone.

When I 1st started reading, I wasn't sure where the book was going At 1 point I thought I would Stop reading And move on to something else. I am very glad I did Not... this book was funny and sad and fantastic all at the same time. I feel like this is a book I would love to read for the 1st time again.