By Emily Henry (Amazon's #20 Best Book of 2022) ★★★★★
A romance novel in Greg’s Top 10? If this makes it, anything can! Nora Stephens is a literary agent in New York City. As she explains in the opening pages, she knows all of the romantic literary tropes -- the city boy or girl who goes to the small town and falls in love with the country girl or boy, etc. etc. She’s read it a thousand times, and she knows exactly who she is: never the one finding romance, but rather the “ice queen” back at home that everyone is made to hate so they don’t feel bad when the romantic hero leaves her behind. It’s happened to her in real life multiple times.
After it happens *again*, on her way to a business meeting with rival editor Charlie Lastra, Nora has effectively hit rock bottom in her love life. When her pregnant sister Libby suggests a sisters trip to a small North Carolina town where her top client’s most recent best-selling book is set, Nora reluctantly accepts.
Big city girl going to the small town in a romance novel -- you can see where this is going, right? Well, maybe…but the level of self-awareness and mockery of the genre makes you go, “Come on, you can do better than that, right?” And, thankfully, Henry does, keeping you guessing along the way, and turning perhaps the most well-known trope in the genre on its head, at least a little bit.
This makes the list for a reason you might not expect: it was the funniest book I read this year, by a pretty wide margin. Nora is fully self-aware, especially as Libby tries to guilt her into typical rom-com scenarios. After Nora agrees to the trip, Libby makes a list of all of the things they’ll do together (skinny dipping, sleeping under the stars, riding a horse..) and excitedly says, “We’re going to have so much fun, Sissy! And you’re going to fall in love with a lumberjack.”
“If there’s one thing that makes me horny,” Nora replies, “it’s deforestation.”
Nora’s caustic wit and the absurd situations she finds herself in provide plenty of laugh out loud moments. For a genre I rarely dabble in, this one elevates what typically seem like formulaic throwaway efforts to a higher level, a formula that has author Henry as a budding star in the genre and one that helped Book Lovers earn a place in the Amazon Editors’ Top 20 and a place in my Top 10.
Previous Best of 2022: #10 - Pay Dirt Road
Next Best of 2022: #8 - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow