Oh, this is the best love story! Bonus points: It's witty, intelligent, and funny, too.

Written by Curtis Sittenfeld, this is a rom-com novel with a clever plot: It's 2018. Sally Milz is a longtime writer for "The Night Owls," a not-so-subtle spoof of "Saturday Night Live" complete with a Loren Michaels-type character. Sally is 36, divorced, and somewhat bitter about love and romance. She has noticed a trend over the years. Gorgeous, talented female celebrities who serve as guest hosts often fall for male writers who have only average looks, but it never happens the other way around. She is so unnerved by this that she writes a skit for the show about it, which is so funny it goes wildly viral.

Meanwhile, the guest host and musical guest one week is Noah Brewster, a hugely successful pop singer who is incredibly good-looking, wealthy, and talented. And while he has reputation for dating models, he's also kind and thoughtful—a good human being. And guess what? Noah falls for Sally. Big time. But she doesn't trust it. Why would someone like Noah Brewster date HER? Sally says something stupid, and it ends rather abruptly. Fast forward two years. It's July 2020 and the country is hunkered down for the coronavirus pandemic. Sally has moved to her childhood home in Kansas City and taken up residence with her much loved 81-year-old stepfather, Jerry, and his dog, Sugar. Out of the blue, Noah emails her. The sparks fly…and you'll have to read the book to find out what happens next.

While Noah is a little too perfect, Sally is a little too whiny and untrusting, and the plot is a little too predictable, it's easy to forgive all that. It's a romantic comedy, after all! This is an entertaining and humorous novel that will lift you out of real life in a delightful, fun way. Read it and enjoy.

I really enjoyed this book. At first I wasn’t sure if I would be too old to enjoy it. I will be 74 tomorrow! But I think this book will be a fun read for a wide range of ages. I even liked the texting section though some of the acronyms flew right by me. Not even sure that’s what they are called nowadays.

The author did a wonderful job of portraying the main characters insecurities and relationships with a variety of people. At the end I was thinking to myself he had done an excellent job portraying his female characters. Turned to look at that back and found out Curtis is a girls name!

I should have known!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading about how at show that is based on SNL comes together. I found the characters believable and lovable. I was rooting for Noah and Sally! The novel is current and refreshing. There are some laugh out loud moments and endearing ones as well. The addition of emails and text messages was well placed and the timing of the relationship was also perfect. If you enjoy books that focus on the realities and pitfalls of romance, you will love it.

I loved the behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of TNO (The Night Owls--i.e. the thinly veiled SNL), and it was completely believable to me that Sally would be confident in her professional abilities as a comedy writer, yet insecure in her personal life. This story had two things working in her favor, though: first, Sally & Noah met in a place where she felt confident, which is an attractive quality to most men, and second, Noah was old enough and had been through enough therapy to be tired of shallow connections. The story wouldn't have worked with younger characters, I don't think.

Actually, I'll add a third: COVID lockdowns. For those of us who lived through the pandemic (which is everyone reading this), we experienced the duality of this chaotic era that both caused massive upheaval but also gifted us with time to reevaluate our lives. And the latter is what allowed Noah to slow down enough to forgive Sally's verbal sabotage of their budding relationship and to reach out and reconnect.

While I couldn't always decide whether I wanted to hug Sally and give her a pep talk or shake her for making so many unhelpful assumptions about what Noah was thinking or feeling, I could definitely relate to her and rooted for the relationship to flourish.

This was my fave author, I read everything by her. This book would only hold interest for someone with a keen curiosity as to how SNL Is produced. I am not that person. Book is cutesy. I could not get past page 11. Chick Lit.