by Curtis Sittenfeld ★★★☆☆
Sally Milz is a writer on The Night Owls, a not-even-remotely-trying-to-hide-it fictional duplication of Saturday Night Live. She's entering her ninth season on the show, so she's established, but also is feeling somewhat unfulfilled. She's at a "what's next for me" moment in her life -- she's in her thirties, mostly single (she has a f--- buddy on the side), and while she loves her job and the cast and the intensity of it, she's also reached a saturation point where it feels like it's time for a change.
Her best friend on the show, Danny Horst, has just gotten engaged to actress Annabel Lily after a whirlwind and very public six weeks of dating (after meeting on the show), the third such time a coupling like that has happened. However, it's always been that direction: schlubby male employee of The Night Owls connects with an A-list, glamorous female. It prompts Sally to write a sketch called "The Danny Horst Rule", which calls out the "phenomenon where men at TNO date above their station, but women never do." The host that week is Noah Brewster -- he's also doubling as the musical guest -- who hit it big with a cheesy hit as a teen heartthrob, but has now matured into his thirties and is writing more serious music. But, he still has "piercing blue eyes, shaggy blond hair and stubble, a big toothy grin, and a jacked body", according to Sally.
A skit calling out the question on why hot men don't "date down"...a scenario IRL that would fit that exact description...you can see where this is going, right? Well, while I'd love to say it took some turns I wasn't expecting, I'd be lying. It pretty much plays out exactly as you might expect, perhaps with a mild lane change along the way (vs. a turn or an exit off the highway it's on). Sally is a relationship saboteur, so Sittenfeld uses that to create some drama / tension / etc., but Noah is super understanding in addition to having all of those devastatingly handsome qualities and top-notch musical talent, and so the tension never really builds, since he's so forgiving and uber-perfect.
I think this is the first fiction I've read that actually takes place during the pandemic. I suspect a lot of the authors writing in the last couple of years simply set their novels before 2020, because if you were writing in 2020 or 2021, you didn't necessarily know how things might turn out, and the pandemic was such a disruption that you couldn't include it unless you wanted it to play a significant role in any story set in real life. If you're far-left-leaning politically, the account of the pandemic from Sittenfeld and Sally's worldview will feel normal; if you're anything else, it will probably feel a bit over-the-top. Sittenfeld mentions masks 29 times in the last 150 pages (the first half of the book takes place pre-pandemic) -- to the point that it was unnecessarily distracting. We get it -- Sally always wears her mask, no exceptions, ever! Noah, a super fit 36-year-old with no pre-existing conditions, was bedridden for nearly 3 weeks with Covid. Sally recounts how she and Danny Horst "both began sobbing, and threw ourselves into each other's arms" on election night in 2016 when it became clear that Trump was going to win. Given Sittenfeld's 2020 novel Rodham, an alternative history where Hillary Clinton becomes President, I should have expected this, but I was hoping for a little more nuance, if not from Sally then at least from Noah or one of the secondary characters. Instead, we get an iron-clad echo chamber of thought among all characters in the novel.
Overall, this was a quick read that was decently entertaining, but also failed to surprise me even once. The initial premise and tie-ins to SNL were a good hook, but beyond that it sort of fizzled out. Plus, for a book entitled Romantic Comedy, it's not especially romantic or comedic. Despite the lack of nuance or misdirection in the book, I weirdly still mostly enjoyed it, but for a book that landed in Amazon's Best Books of 2023 So Far, I wanted it to be so much better than it was. If you're in the mood for romance (and comedy, for that matter), I'd recommend something by Emily Henry instead. Book Lovers was not only a good romance, it was also the funniest book I read last year -- I'd start there.