Romantic Comedy is the second book I’ve read by Curtis Sittenfeld. Thanks to @randomhouse for sending it to me. This book is about Sally, a comedy writer at an SNL-like TV show, who writes a skit about how average-looking men somehow manage to end up with beautiful talented women, but average-looking women don’t end up with 10/10 men. Appearing on the episode is a pop-star hunk who she ends up hitting it off with. But guys like him never end up with girls like her, right? But what if they do?

This book is split into essentially three parts. The first part is the week of the show. The second part is comprised of emails written back and forth during the pandemic. The last part is post-email exchange, still during the pandemic. The first part was very much inside-SNL, which if you are a mega fan, it might be fun, but for me it was a little much. The emailing landed a little better for me - there were some witty exchanges, I cracked a smile or two. And the last part, idk, I just feel like the way things worked out wasn’t entirely believable. The chemistry between the characters wasn’t there.

I think I would enjoy this more as a show or movie, because banter on the page just doesn’t often work for me like it does on the screen. I didn’t really find the writing funny. I feel like this book takes itself and its premise very seriously, and it wasn’t super romantic either, despite the title. Also, it’s not doing anything new. Super talented/super handsome man falls in love with plain average-looking woman who actually isn’t that funny despite being a comedy writer… tbh Twilight did it first. If the title of a book is Romantic Comedy, the book should be a romcom, shouldn’t it? And it really isn’t that. Slight rom with a hint of com maybe, but neither aspect worked particularly well for me.

Overall this was fine. I did finish it. I would watch it as a movie or show, because I think a talented actors could bring more personality and chemistry to the characters, and then it would be a more fun story.