(courtesy Simon & Schuster Australia)
It goes without saying, and yet of course we are going to stay it still, that romantic comedies come up with a bulging Cupid’s quiver full of tropes, clichés and expectations.
That’s not a bad thing necessarily since the reason we love a particular type of genre is because it cleaves so tightly to particular plot lines, character actions and themes, all of which we know and love, and as the awarding of our precious time and attention span shows, crave.
The trick is, of course, what you do with all these well-worn storytelling bits-and-bobs, and if there is anything to be said about Amy Huttons’s gorgeously Australian rom-com debut, Sit, Stay, Love, it’s how well brilliantly well it breathes energising new life into a genre that comes laden with more than its fair share of tropes etc.
Hutton takes elements like long-term besties unaware they are in love with each other – well, one of them at least and honestly, that’s all it takes – a jealous contender to the heart of the oblivious party and the inevitable but wholly welcome happy ending and gives them a freshness and vivacity so bouncy that you will wonder anew at how wonderful love can be.
That can’t be said of all rom-coms of course, and indeed, some feel like they are so world weary you wonder why the author bothered to get the romantic ball rolling in the first place.
She grinned. ‘Did you just say besties? When did you start saying besties?’
‘I [Toby] haven’t. And I’d appreciate you never mentioning it again.’
‘Okay. Goodnight, bestie.’
But Sit, Stay, Love is in a whole other gloriously upbeat and heartfelt class, serving up characters who feel real enough to step off the page, dialogue that zings with sparkly humour and pithily arresting oneliners, a beautifully realised tension between thrilling possibility and crushing disappointment, and a deliciously real sense that the heart can prevail even when the mind is charmingly and madly oblivious.
In this uplifting tale of love suggested and love most definitely found sits Sera, a dedicated pet shelter owner who has turned the sprawling block of land and house on Sydney’s Northern Beaches that she inherited from her deceased grandmother into a sanctuary for all manner of cats and dogs, and even a horse and a sheep.
It’s a tough-and-go existence as these things often are, but Sera is happily anxious, helped along by her BFF Toby, a local vet who looks after Sera’s charges pro bono and who is the emotional rock upon she rests when keeping the shelter afloat begins to feel like far too much for one person to handle.
Naturally Toby is in love with Sera but she has no idea, content to watch Eighties and Nineties films like Die Hard and all the Jurassics, and eat lots of pizza, snuggled into her best friend and trading quips and oneliners in a way that only close friends can manage.
It’s a lovely life and while Sera wishes her mum would be more supportive of her choices, she’s excited to have found purpose and satisfaction in life surrounded by people like Toby, and shelter workers and friends Tia and Carol.
(courtesy official author site)
Into this cosily unaware life one day steps movie star heartthrob Ethan James, the kind of actor women and a sizeable number of men lust after whose Throne of Kings movies has established as a hunky purveyor of aspirational romantic fantasy.
After Sera helps him with a stray dog problem at his place – Ethan has real dog phobia issues and finds theme terrifying in the extreme which is a problem when his breakout role depends on him being all pally with them – he asks her to train for his next role, a gig that soon turns personal and hotly lustful and romantic.
Alas, all this happens as Toby watches fretfully and jealously on, and as Sera’s life starts to take on a more luminously celebratory sheen and her pet shelter gets the sustainably protective boost it needs, she finds herself caught between two men competing for her affections.
It’s a lot and Sera feels the highs and lows rather keenly but what makes the well-done storyline of Sit, Stay, Love feel like a breath of fresh romantic air is how captivatingly Hutton tells the tale.
For all its trope-heavy moments, Sit, Stay, Love feels like the first rom-com you’ve ever read, full of a sweet, charming vivacity that percolates along with a lush freshness that never overstays its welcome and which reaches it conclusion, how well telegraphed it might be, in ways that feels like the most fun you’ve had reading in a while.
She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you. I really don’t We’ll always be friends, right? No matter what happens? We’ll always have each other?’
His brow darkened. ‘Of course.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
She leaned in and kissed his cheek. ‘Good.’
Helping things along considerable is that Sera and Toby in particular, and even as the pretender to the romantic throne, are lovely 3D people you absolutely want to be around.
Far from simply being cardboard cutout props for the narrative, they propel Sit, Stay, Love along with a breathless sense of fun and enjoyment, giving an already vibrant plot even more buzz and energy and a sense of love in the waiting that’s so palpable you expect it to burst off the pages as you’re turning them.
We read rom-coms because we want to feel better about the world in general and love in particular, and Sit, Stay, Love rewards that urge perfectly, delivering a heartwarming sense of good things happen, just as we want them to, to very good, if authentically flawed people.
It’s a huge hug and massive injection of hope, love and comedically charming possibility to the soul, one of those novels you finish reluctantly because who wants to leave a cosily lovely world behind?
None of us really, but leave we must; still even as turn the last page, we feel like someone has made all the bad and rough things smooth and good again, which is what a rom-com should do and which Sit, Stay, Love does with originally alive and fresh gusto, a novel that loves its animals, love its people and gives all of them the kind of happy-ever-after that will have you sighing with happiness and contentment for quite a while afterwards.