Cute, but nothing really special. There are books of Center's I have enjoyed more and books of Center's I've enjoyed less. Pretty classic romance novel. Missing some steam.

The Rom-Commers is great novel for rom-com movie lovers! A struggling writer, Emma Wheeler, gets a chance of a lifetime to meet one of her favorite screen writers ever, Charlie Yates. Despite his usual award winning screen plays, Charlie has written possibly the worst ever rom-com screen play that Emma or his agent has ever read. Charlie's agent and Emma's best friend, Logan, hires Emma to be Charlie's ghost writer to help improve his screen play. Only problem is, Logan did not mention this plan to Charlie. He just shows up a Charlie's door in LA with Emma in tow without Charlie's approval. Emma and Charlie must learn to work together to teach Charlie about Rom-coms and to participate in some of the "romantic" scenes that Charlie has written so he can see how not romantic they are. Is line-dancing even remotely sexy or romantic?

The creation of the rom-com screenplay in itself is a great storyline, but as Katherine Center does she adds much more emotional depth. The reason Emma Wheeler has not made is a screen writer yet is not due to her lack of trying or any failed attempts. The reason is she is the sole care provider for her father who was left severely injured after a rock climbing accident. She must stay with him 24/7 to insure he does not injure himself further and provide the care that he needs. Charlie also faces his own battles, so the two develop a romance while they are learning to deal with their own issues and each others. There is a lot of humor in the book, and I complete fell for the characters and their chemistry. Great rom-com!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for granting me a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!

4.4 stars for me. Thought this book was a ton of fun and one of my favorite Katherine Center reads. Emma is delightful and Charlie isn’t, until Emma draws it out of him. The premise is that Emma gets an opportunity to help her favorite screenwriter, Charlie, rewrite an awful rom-com using her preconceived notions of what defines a perfect rom com. Easy read. By the need you are laughing with Emma and Charlie. Highly recommend. You will read it with a smile!

I was beyond excited to receive this eARC!!! Emma has spent the past decade caring for her father after her family’s tragic accident. Putting aside her needs to be a caregiver and to make sure her sister had a good childhood despite what happened to them. Logan, Emma’s ex-boyfriend calls from LA with a proposition. His client and famous author Charlie needs help with his manuscript. Charlie is a skilled writer but he’s botched this rom-com. That’s where Emma comes in. She leaves her life behind for an opportunity of a life time. With some romance of her own.

Just another banger from Katherine Center. I screamed when I got the eARC I just love all her books. This was especially heartfelt. She really knows how to pull at your heart strings. Perfectly fluffy and emotional. Charlie is a goofy lovable grump and Emma is surprisingly sunny despite her past. Thank you netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the eARC

The rom-commers is a rom-com about two people writing a rom-com and honestly, it’s magic.

You know that feeling you get when you’re watching your favorite rom-com? The one that cheers you up on a bad day, that has the characters you genuinely love, and that you can watch a hundred times without getting sick of? That’s the feeling I had when I read this book. (And, for the record, that movie for me is You’ve Got Mail ☺️)

Our main character, Emma Wheeler is an aspiring screenwriter and she knows, like really knows, rom-coms. She happens to fall into the opportunity of a lifetime, co-writing a screenplay with the *very* famous Charlie Yates. You see, he has written a rom-com for the first time and… it’s terrible. Emma has six weeks to help him turn it into a great movie. Except Charlie has no interest in making it great (just has to be good enough) and no interest in working with her.

You can guess what happens, but the way it all plays out is just perfect. I loved how Emma taught us the beauty of rom-coms, what works and what doesn’t, the elements that need to be there to make it great - all while we were reading an amazing rom-com that she was starring in herself. Honestly it was brilliant. Katherine Center hit this one out of the park, I absolutely loved it!

I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to read an arc of this book, thank you SO much @netgalley @stmartinspress! This book publishes on June 11 (my birthday!) and I highly, highly recommend picking it up. I’ve heard rumblings of a beautiful hardcover edition with pink edged pages and I think I just might have to buy myself a copy for my bookshelf!

Okay Katherine Center is becoming one of my favorite authors! The Rom-Commers is full of rapid-fire conversations, endearing cliffhanger chapters, and Katherine's confident, likable female main character (much like in The Bodyguard). I appreciate the word-smithing and care for dialogue the two writers-characters had throughout the book. This was a sweet story with a classic HEA!

Thank you St Martins Press and NetGalley for this ARC!

The Rom-Commers! Such a fun read with great main characters and memorable supporting characters. I love a good rom com and this has every gorgeous element, written so well that you'll forget it's going to be an ending you may or may not see coming. Loved it! Couldn't stop reading this one. For everyone who watches any of our favorite romance classics on repeat......

In this lighthearted romcom, romance writer Emma tries to give famous, award-winning screenwriter Charlie a crash-course in rom coms and love. Of course, they fall victim to their own tropes along the way and find themselves falling in love.

This quick read is high on banter and low on steam. It's cute, but with some tough issues in it too. I really like how Katherine Center incorporates some meta commentary on romcoms and the romance genre, particularly when it comes to how men tend to dismiss the genre as a whole. Overall, this is a good romance for a sunny weekend or a beach trip when you just want to slip into a love story for a bit.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Rom-Commers was my first Katherine Center book, and it was a great read! Thanks to St. Martin's Press for the Advance Reader's Copy. Emma and Charlie are both writers and are thrown together on a project by their mutual friend Logan. Emma is tasked with helping Charlie, a famous screen writer, edit (rewrite) his latest work, which is a rom-com. As she educates him on the genre, they get to know each other and find that they have a great time together. They are both healing from some past tragedies, and both have a wickedly funny sense of humor. Emma has idolized Charlie's writing for years, but that doesn't impede their work or developing friendship. While there is little steam, Emma and Charlie's banter and analysis of the rom-com genre is so fun to read. In the end, they get their HEA and both find professional success as well. I really loved reading about Emma and Charlie's friendship and work relationship that turns into much more. This book was really a treat to read!

Thank you St. Martin's Press, NetGalley and the author for this ARC to read and review.

How fun this read was! Honestly, the first chapter the book didn't really feel like my style, I was unsure if I was going to finish this one. Those thoughts did not last long AT ALL! I was drawn in almost immediately after I had the thought and I didn't look back. The chemistry between Emma and Charlie was great and their banter even better. The action-writer curmudgeon meets sheltered rom-com enthusiast. Emma has a lot on her plate and gives it all up (begrudgingly) to follow her passion and do a collab write with her favorite screenwriter. Hilarity ensues. I devoured this in a couple days and couldn't be happier that I did!

It will be a shock to no one to hear that a book about screenwriters writing a romance was full of witty banter, sparkling conversation, and introspective quotes. It was absolute perfection with relatable characters and some mild emotional devastation.

Watching the friendship and love grow between Emma and Charlie was an absolute delight. With their individually tragic histories, they quickly become a couple you can root for, even in their bouts of stubbornness. Emma’s anxiety and desire to control most situations were extremely relatable, and Charlie’s bond with his guinea pig had me swooning.

This book made me laugh out loud, but it also made me shed a tear (or ten). The last 20% of this book had an emotional chokehold on me; I couldn’t put it down if I tried.

I think it’s safe to say I have a new favorite Katherine Center book.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I have read several of Katherine Center's books. I have enjoyed some of them more than others, but I like that Center typically tries to pull out the good and give things a positive spin.

The Rom-Commers is about two writers, living and writing a rom-com screenplay together. Charlie is a successful screenwriter; albeit he normally writes action movies, so when he is tasked with writing a rom-com, its terrible. Enter Emma, who writes rom-coms but she is small potatoes compared to Charlie. For six weeks, Emma lives with Charlie in his house, working to re-write his screenplay with him and we all know what comes of forced proximity - a forced proximity romance.

I enjoyed that this book was about writers, even more so a romance between writers. I enjoyed the way that Emma taught Charlie about romance and rom-coms for their screenplay. I will say that I felt as if the relationship between Charlie and Emma switching from platonic to not was a quick transition. Overall, my favorite thing about this book is that Emma is teaching Charlie about rom-coms and key elements to a rom-com. She is teaching him what a romance is and is not in her eyes and heart and about happily ever afters.

"It's all about the details you notice. And the joys you savor. And the hope you refuse to given up on."

This was one of my most anticipated reads for 2024 and it did not disappoint. The Rom-Commers was everything I look for in a romance book: compelling characters, humour, excellent banter, and a wonderful love story that I could not put down. I love how real all of Katherine Center's characters are and the conflict they face, both with each other and within themselves. The characters, particularly Emma, had excellent growth throughout the story and I rooted for her the whole way. I also enjoyed the supporting characters and thought they added to the story. Overall, excellent read and I am so happy that I had the chance to read it!

Emma Wheeler wants to be a big-time screenwriter but has put her dreams on hold to care for her dad who was in an accident years ago and needs round-the-clock care. When she receives a call telling her that she’ll get to write with Charlie Yates, her favorite screenwriter, she can’t pass the opportunity. She leaves her sister to care for her dad and flies to LA. Upon arrival at Charlie's front door, she learns that he doesn’t know about this plan.

This was the first book I read by Katherine Center and it was such a cute rom-com. It was funny and had enjoyable characters. Emma feels like she needs to take care of her dad and has put her life on hold for a long time. This big moment to write for Charlie Yates let her do something out of her comfort zone for once. Their relationship in the book started slow but then felt a little rushed at the end. We see Charlie do all these things for her but then he continues to push her away because he doesn’t feel like he’s good enough for her. I get why he did it but it honestly made me really mad.

The writing style was also different than I’m used to. It’s a first-person POV but Emma sometimes breaks the fourth wall by saying stuff along the lines of “I’ll let you have a moment…” or “You might be wondering why..”. I don’t think I’ve really seen this in books before so I found that a little weird. I’m not sure if Katherine Center does it in her other books but I would love to read them sometime.

This was a quick fund read and probably my favorite romance novel by Katherine Center. Her upcoming release, The Rom-Commers is a great book to bring to the beach or on your summer vacation.

The banter between Emma and Charlie is witty and funny. If you like the enemies to lovers storyline, this one if for you. I found both Emma and Charlie a little hard to love in some areas, but really enjoyed their chemistry with each other.

Center includes some serious topics, such as Maniere's Disease, cancer, death of a parent and more. I enjoyed the balance between the light romance and darker topics in the novel.

Thank you NetGalley for my advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. The Rom-Commers comes out on June 11, 2024!

⭐️: 4/5

When her father sustained a debilitating injury, Emma dropped everything, including her dream of being a writer and her plans to go to college, in order to care for him. Now, she receives the chance of a lifetime: to help her favorite screenwriter, Charlie Yates, rewrite his horrible script romcom script. The problem? He doesn’t believe in love or happy endings, and his writing reflects it. In order to produce a good screenplay, Emma must work to convince Charlie that love exists. But soon, their real lives start to imitate the fiction they’re writing.

When you’re in the mood for a romcom book and are able to suspend reality in your mind, you can do no better than Katherine Center. So I guess it’s a good thing that I was in the mood for a romcom 😂 I’ve read a handful of books by Center, and I think this one was my favorite. I was about to give up on her after Hello Stranger, because it had some of the hallmarks of romcoms that really irk me, including a terribly irritating character. Luckily, that wasn’t the case in The Rom-Commers, and I really enjoyed the characters and the plot of this one. It was surprisingly meta, since it talked about some of the pillars that we expect from a romcom while fulfilling them at the same time, so the tongue in cheek quality of this one made it a fun read. Not to mention, the banter was absolutely top-notch. I’m also such a sucker for a fictional universe created by the author, so seeing characters from her previous books pop up in this one made me really happy. I have to mention though, and I really hope that this is due to the fact that I was reading an ARC and not a finished copy, but I just discovered an entirely new ick in the form of someone thinking that voilà is spelled “wah-lah” which like, I just can’t. The romance was definitely a bit of a slow burn, but I think it really served the plot in this case, and much like the theme of the book, I love a good happy ending and epilogue, which this one provided.

Thank you to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for this free eARC for my honest review!!

Oh Katherine Center, can you do anything less than perfection? The Rom-Commers is a novel that embraces all of the cult classic early 2000s romcom movie feels. Readers are blessed with a forced proximity, grumpy vs sunshine type situation when Emma joins up to write a screen play with her personal writing hero- Charlie Yates.

The banter, the tension, the slow burn of slipping into absolute head over heels love was just perfectly paced and addictive. A perfect story to slip into when you're looking to lose track of time and be completely enamored by two fictional characters. Both Emma and Charlie offer such deep and emotional complexities to the story and while there is so much light-hearted humor and fun in this read, the emotional depth of overcoming some deep trauma does not shy away from the spotlight. Both characters are forced to face some deeply traumatic issues all while attempting to care for everyone but themselves. The true beauty in this entire story is when they both finally start to care for themselves and let themselves really feel and want.

10 STARS! I love everything Katherine Center writes, so I was excited to read The Rom-Commers. Great characters, great plot, and a story that continued to evolve. The awkward want-to-be screen writer who foregoes her dreams to take care of her father after an accident and also puts her work aside to ensure her younger sister as a somewhat normal upbringing and chance at her dreams.
The stubborn Hollywood writer who doesn't know love or how to write a rom-comm. Put them together and there's tension, flirtation, dealing with life's realities.
I loved every minute of this book and highly recommend it!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for access to this eARC.

ARC Review

This was my first book by Katherine Center. It was a sweet romcom, as the name suggests, and I really enjoyed the banter and the wit throughout the story. I found the premise to be a really fun one, having two writers from different genres come together to write a screen play together. That definitely helped to create some fun tension between our two main characters.

I didn’t care for the MMC too much, I found him to be abrasive and distant. Though the few moments where he showed passion and vulnerability were shining moments for me personally.

Emma’s father was a favorite character of mine. He was so joyous and optimistic, even with everything he had been dealt in life.


Overall, I found it to be an entertaining and light read that I would recommend to someone looking for a book that has no spice, some tension, and a happy ending.

Katherine Center is quickly becoming my favorite author! Every book she writes is a huge hit!

I devoured this book so fast. I loved the premise and the main characters.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.