(courtesy Hachette Australia)
One of my reading happy places, and as an eclectic reader there are many, is when a writer combines books and love in one beautifully realised package.
There’s something about the idea of a rom-com which is all about books and writing that sets the pulse racing even more than it already would be, which makes sense that love in the real world is often turbocharged when shared, treasured interests are involved.
In Kelley Armstrong’s Finding Mr. Write, her first foray into the rom-com genre after some very successful fantasy novels which, as the cover proclaims shot her to #1 position on the New York Times chart, the two of the great fascination of any reader’s life come together in a story that’s fun, bright and full of tension-filled vivacity that really works a treat.
Much of that can be slated home to how good the two lead characters are together.
Daphne McFadden lives out in Canada’s Yukon, an architect-turned-writer who has designed and built an expansive house on a picturesque lake and who, with husky Tika, spends her days writing her YA rom-com novel about the zombie apocalypse – yes, love can bloom at the end of the world it seems – and shopping it around to prospective publishers via her agent Lawrence.
Finding she doesn’t have many takers as a female author, Daphne decides to create a pseudonym, Zane Remington, to see if more people will bite (word use accidental but appropriate given the subject matter) if the person proposing a very outdoorsy survivalist story is man.
He [Chris] fingered the book. It didn’t feel right, seeing his photo on Daphne’s book.
It had been her choice though.
Why had she chosen a male pen name? He had a feeling it wasn’t a random decision, and that bothered him.
Dammit but that turns out to be the case, and such is the demand now Zane is the author designate, that a bidding war erupts and huge sums of money are paid for the rights, and suddenly Daphne’s book is the flavour of the month and everyone wants to meet Zane.
Uh-oh, where on earth does Daphne go now?
If this wasn’t a rom-com, odds are that someone would fess up and say it’s a pseudonym and that would be that; but Finding Mr. Write is a rom-com, and a perfectly pitched one at that, and so Daphne decides after a few too many wines to hire an actor to play Zane – after all, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, plenty as it turns out, and much of Finding Mr. Write is powered by the ever-growing realisation that Zane, played by nice guy Vancouver accountant Chris Stanton, is increasingly the face of the book that Daphne has poured her heart and soul into and that she risks losing agency over her own creation.
That’s not Chris’s fault – he’s as lovely and decent, and yes, of course, handsomely ripped as they come, and he very quickly falls for Daphne and decides that he’ll do whatever it takes to make his new crush’s book a success, including being filmed for a feature piece on the new hunk-bro author who is quickly becoming a publishing sensation, grizzly bears encounters and all.
(courtesy Tachyon Publications)
That’s all very awww-worthy and as rom-coms go, Finding Mr. Write ticks all the boxes in richly vivacious, funny and heartfelt fashion.
It is, like Chris himself, the total package.
But as the book, At the Edge of the World, goes absolute gangbusters, Daphne and Chris are pushed even further into their ever more elaborate “write lie” – not my play on words; rather thank the back blurb genius at Piatkus – and it becomes increasingly apparent, especially after they have to tour the book across the United States, that someone somewhere is going to figure that Zane does not exist and that Chris is somewhat fraudulently pretending to be him.
It’s just a matter of time, right, and indeed, that moment does arrive far earlier than anyone is prepared for, and much of the fun, if it can be called that because in many ways the whole ordeal is very stressful, of Finding Mr. Write is reading as Daphne and Chris try to figure out how to tell the truth and stay in love at the same time.
It’s a huge ask, and being a good box ticking rom-com – in the good sense always; Armstrong’s box ticking is delightfully original, and emotionally warm, vivacious fun – things don’t go according to plan and the two “partners in crime” soon find things spiralling way out of control to the point where all of Daphne’s hard writing work and Chris’ impersonisation of Zane might in the end amount to nothing but PR disaster.
Well played, Chris.
All right then, no more wondering whether he was interested. He was. Which meant Daphne was getting her fling.
‘Good night, Chris,’ she whispered, and opened the door to her room.
There’s so much that could go wrong, and as Finding Mr. Write progresses much like a snowball of fakery rolling down a hill of lies, its eventual impact growing as it gather speeds and social media virality, you are almost clutching the seat/pillow/whatever it is you read on as Daphne tries to work out how tame the monster she has unleashed.
It’s a messy, complex situation, made all the more challenging by the fact that her pseudonym made flesh is now the object of her romantic intentions – well eventually; at first she thinks a fling will be sufficient but c’mon, Chris is GORGEOUS! As if that could just stay in fling-land – and they are falling HARD for each other.
Is there a way to find love, reveal the truth and keep all the gains, professional and romantic, and emerge with everything intact?
Ah, that must be left to the reading, but suffice to say that Finding Mr. Write is a delight from start to finish, no matter how thorny the cover-up and its exposé become, and the odds of a happy if complicated ending are reasonably good.
Having said that, as a member of a genre that thrives on certain plot points being honoured at certain times, and the comfort and predictability in equal measure that that implies, Finding Mr. Write still manages to feel bright, fresh and a whole lot of vivaciously original and heartfelt fun, and you will get to the end of it happy to have spend time in Chris and Daphne’s romantic and publishing chaos never once loses steam as it races to a perfectly realised final act.