(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia)
Is it possible, we muse wonderingly at the start of this review, to reinvent a trope?
Or, at the very least, and trust us, it’s a very good “very least” indeed, to put a shiny new sheen on it and present it to an enraptured world to enjoy?
It is, and Amy Andrews most certainly has, in Engaged, Apparently, which takes the much-loved “fake engagement for a purpose” trope and puts a whole new spin on it, making the perpetrators of this act not the people in the romantic firing line themselves but those close to them, in this case the mothers of the broadsided “happy couple”.
And truth be told, as a result of a massive, social reputation-saving white lie at their combined 60th birthday parties, Victorian country town mothers Ronnie and Connie, who have been super close friends all their lives and have survived losing their husbands in traumatic circumstances both, have plunged their children, Finn and Sweeney respectively, into a situation neither of them asked for or wanted.
They’re only back from overseas – Fin from a successful accountancy gig in Dublin and Sweeney from a globetrotting photographic career nominally based in New York – for their mothers’ birthdays, and their surprise arrival is supposed to herald uncomplicated joy not a fake engagement that the whole town takes to with gusto, causing the two childhood friends no amount of embarrassment and social awkwardness.
Ronnie and Connie exchanged a look that left Fin in no doubt that their presence was a very distant second to this proposed fake engagement. He supposed he should be grateful they hadn’t invented a pregnancy as well.
Suddenly, in front of a room full of townspeople they have known all their lives, they are gobsmacked to hear their mothers, who are feeling left out by their friends’ gushing pronouncements about grandchildren and engagements, declare that they too are the bearers of happy matrimonial news.
It’s funny, and fantastically well delivered by an author who is a master of the romcom storyline and a real artist when it comes to snappy, clever, bouncy dialogue, and it carries some pretty much intense emotionality too with Fin and Sweeney, still carrying the scars of past grief and pain, having to confront the fact that maybe there is something between them.
Or not; no, definitely not, surely not, because if there is, and there isn’t, then what the hell do they do with that and do they want their mother’s ill-considered, impromptu announcement to actually be true?
Can you imagine how insufferable that would make Ronnie and Connie?
Anyway, that huge issue aside, Finn and Sweeney have a luggage store full of emotional baggage to unpack, and way more time than they expected, for reasons best left to the highly enjoyable reading of Engaged, Apparently, to stay in their hometown of Ballyshannon to unpack it and the last they need is everyone thinking they’re engaged.
But that’s what everyone thinks, save for busybody Marjorie Weaver who is convinced, and rightly as it turns out, that Ronnie and Connie have made it all up and that the true is not even remotely romantic and nor can it ever be.
(courtesy official author site)
Oh, really, Marjorie, because Engaged, Apparently is a romcom of the highest order and it is well known that the “fake engagement” trope – 2.0 in this case and looking all the better for the upgrade and the reinvention – can only ever lead to love, true love.
That’s the whole purpose of the trope and genre and Andrews, the author of some 90 books, well and truly knows how to execute on turning a giddily fun premise into a substantially emotional and hugely funny story.
In fact, one of the many things that makes Engaged, Apparently such a massive delight to read is the way in which Andrews sustains the will-they-won’t-they, are-they-are-they-not dynamic that propels the novel through most of its length without once breaking a sweat.
This is not some half-baked romcom which goes over the same ground again and again in a bid to stop the inevitable declarations of love and spice goings-on from and which begins to feel like a tired, old broken record by the time you actually reach the big finale.
Engaged, Apparently is refreshingly able to keep Finn and Sweeney dancing around each other, getting closer and closer without declaring there’s more than friendship at play here, and still have things feel as fresh and vitally funny and meaningful three-quarters through as they were at the beginning.
That’s quite the feat and one that not all romcom authors manage but Andrews does it with jaunty, emotionally fresh aplomb and it means that Engaged, Apparently arrives at the big moment without feeling some tired narrative retread.
And she [Sweeney] was too afraid to explore the reasons why, not least because she was trying to hang on to a relationship that suddenly felt like shifting sand beneath her feet.
It helps that Finn and Sweeney are two very well-rounded, fully-realised characters who can well and truly sustain the tension of when will they realise they are in love with each other.
You’re having so much fun with these two people, and the way they have to fill in their longer than expected time in the town without going full couple out and about, and their many conversations about the present and the past that their gradual but meaningful journey to the finish line always feels it has something to say.
Engaged, Apparently has a great deal of fun with the way in which social media can turn the local global in a nanosecond and how assumptions are really just there to be turned completely on their head, with all kinds of hilarious moments, heartfelt conversations and charming tales of community, belonging and family thrown in for good measure.
It is one of the best romcoms this reviewer has read in some time, possessing all the usual romantic ticking of the boxes without ever once feeling anything other than vibrantly humourously and affectingly original.
Engaged, Apparently is an absolute gem, a novel that begins by upending, or at least twisting a much-treasured trope and then proceeding to take a great many others and give them an entertaining spit and polish with characters you love, dialogue that crackles and pop with wit and wisdom and a story that goes where you know it will but in ways that surprise, delight and, of course because that’s why we’re here, gladden the heart.