When it comes to fiction, there is no story without drama. Inciting incidents start a narrative in motion, and they always involve something sad, dangerous, or complicated. This is true even when the book is on the lighter side: tragic deaths can start a rom com, a comedy can be centered in the consequences of deception, and there are often betrayals that knock the protagonist off balance.
I recently finished a few pleasant reads in which, after the requisite dramatics, nothing truly terrible happens. With so much anxiety in the air these days, here are a few books that serve as blithe distractions.
After his best friend dies, alcoholic former sitcom star Patrick O’Hara finds himself watching her kids while her husband (also Patrick’s brother) is in rehab for opioid addiction. Living in seclusion in Palm Springs, Patrick strikes a (Auntie Mame) pose and tries his hand at parenting. Complicating the story is the kids’ other aunt, Clara, who wants them in a more stable environment. Namely, hers.
This book is laugh-out-loud funny at times, with witty one-liners landing with ease. There is poignancy to Patrick’s decline and also to his gradual maturity as he sees that he is responsible for someone other than himself. Parts of it drag, too, with a certain amount of unnecessary detail. Overall, though, this is a read that will pull up mainly tears of joy.
2.
Nina Hill is a bookseller in LA, living with her cat in a guesthouse, happy to attend four book clubs a month and occasional trivia nights. She is taken aback when she learns that her biological father, a man she never knew, has died and put her in his will. Soon, Nina is meeting new family and dating a fellow trivia buff.
Other than the death of Nina’s father, this book is a genial romcom featuring an independent bookworm. It has great observations, such as this one about Nina’s Aussie mother: “She said sockAH instead of soccer or lollies instead of candy, but it wasn’t like she walked around in a hat with corks dangling from it.” Or this one about Nina’s bluntness, “She wasn’t mean; she was painfully accurate.”
I’m not a huge romcom fan, but this one hit the spot, in part because it’s Nina’s love of reading that is the true romance. To wit: “She thought of books as medication and sanctuary and the source of all goods things. Nothing yet had proven her wrong.”
3.
This is a genuine Gen Z romcom, complete with a pansexual supporting character and a protagonist who talks about Health at Every Size. Charlie Vega lives in Connecticut with a mother she can’t relate to, and the memory of better times when her beloved father was alive. Her best friend, Amelia, is the “pretty one” and Charlie struggles daily with her self-image as a plus-size white Latina. She wants to be kissed and sets her sights on a dreamboat jerk. No mystery what happens there.
Eventually, Charlie finds love with a sensitive boy with two moms. It was at this point that the book began to flag for me. Charlie has long self-aware monologues that sound like something off Dawson’s Creek. There is a nice subplot about her and Amelia, and how having a boyfriend changes Charlie, but a lot of her other transformative moments felt forced.
My concern about books like this is that teenagers will read them and expect this to happen to them. I’m not sure that it will. Romcoms often present the world as what the authors wish it could be, not what it actually is.
Books Smitten 