Book Lovers

BEHIND THE BOOK

I LOVE HALLMARK MOVIES. I love the quaint settings. I love the excessive number of sweaters and knee-high boots. I love the aspirational level of commitment to seasonal décor in every home. Most of all, I love the happy endings.

And having seen enough of these low-angst, made-for-TV delights (Hallmark and otherwise), I found myself fascinated with one particular iteration of the small-town romance. It goes like this: an uptight, joyless, career-obsessed main character gets shipped off from the big city they call home to conduct business in Middle America. They don’t want to go! They don’t even have the right shoes for this kind of setting! But once they’re there, not only do they manage to fall in love with one of the sweet, small-town locals, but they also manage to learn the true meaning of life. (Spoiler alert: it’s not a high-power career in a major metropolis.)

And everyone ends up happy. Well, everyone except for the ex. The woman (or man) left behind in the city, whose entire role is usually to call the lead character and bark at them over the phone, remind them that they went to Smalltown, USA for business—to conduct a mass layoff, or to crush the local toy emporium so Big Toy can open its 667th location in the heart of the town, while maybe bulldozing a gazebo or two on the way.

She is an obstacle to the real love story, the meant to be relationship. Or she’s a foil to the local sweetheart, there primarily to show how much better the other woman understands the lead. Or she’s the not-evil-just-out-of-touch little devil on his shoulder, trying to lead him astray from this new, better life.

Again, it has to be said, I love these movies, and plenty don’t play out exactly like this, but enough do that I found myself asking, Who is this woman?

Where does her story go from here?

Does she go on to have her own small-town life-changing experience?

Does every uptight city person have to leave the city and fall in love with a carpenter to get their happy ending?

Or does her happy ending even look like her ex’s does? What does she crave?

And, possibly most exciting to me of all: why does she so badly want her boyfriend to take care of business and do his job to begin with?

Those were the questions that created Book Lovers, a book whose working title was, in fact, City Person.

It wasn’t just an homage to all those fish-out-of-water stories I love so much, but also to the women who feel like fish out of water, the ones who aren’t sure whether they’re cued up for a happy ending.

The Devil Wears Prada’s Miranda Priestly.

The Parent Trap’s Meredith Blake.

You’ve Got Mail’s Patricia Eden.

The designer-wearing, stiletto-donning, red-pen-wielding, treadmill-using, salad-eating women with very little time for, or interest in, baking, camping, or watching sunrises.

This was my exploration of who those women really are, and what a happy ending might look like for them. Not a perfect ending, but an apt one. A happily ever after that’s as messy, complicated, and ultimately irresistible as I find Book Lovers’ city-dwelling, designer-wearing, Peloton-riding, red-pen-wielding lead characters.

So whether you’re a small-town sweetheart, an ambitious careerperson, or a different kind of character entirely, I hope you love Charlie and Nora. And I hope their story reminds you there is no one right way to be, no one-size-fits-all happy ending, and no one else on earth who can be exactly who you are.