The Rom-Com Agenda

Jayne Denker leans into the meta premise here. Her heroine is a screenwriter who makes a living writing romantic comedies but can’t seem to navigate her own love life with anywhere near the same fluency. After a public disaster of a relationship, she decides she’s going to engineer her next one like a script, complete with beats and acts.

What she gets is, of course, not what she planned.

Denker has a light touch with dialogue, and the supporting characters are more developed than the rom-com setup might suggest. The man she ends up actually falling for has the kind of personality that doesn’t fit the script she’s been building, which is the point.

It reads quickly. Fans of Sally Thorne or Christina Lauren will find a similar tone here.