This is the fourth book I’ve read by Katherine Center, and once again, I LOVED it! I love that she includes her Texas roots in each of her stories, too. This book was definitely more emotional than the others I’ve read, so be prepared for the emotional rollercoaster. I listened to this story on audio, and highly recommend!

I judged a book by its cover and I was not wrong! This colorful romantic title came through in this story in the best ways. Thank you Macmillion Audio and Netgalley for this ARC Audio copy. First off the narration was excellent. I am so picky when it comes to narration - in my opinion it can make or break the audio book experience for me.

This is my first Katherine Center book and I really enjoyed it. This felt like a grown up story compared to some romantic comedies. The relationship between Charlie and Emma seemed like a true story plucked out of the hollywood writers wall, without the inappropriate scandals. Charlie starts out a bit rocky, but our MC Emma is a delight from the get go.

“Everybody’s a kid deep down. Use your teacher voice. I bet you’ll be surprised.”

Katherine Center is incredible. I did a virtual book club with her once. I have enjoyed all of her books… even though one.

Emma aspires to be a screen writer and is very good at it. In one second, Emma’s life changes forever. Her mom dies and her dad is permanently disabled in a tragic accident. Emma puts her dreams on hold.

Years later, Emma gets the opportunity of a lifetime to ghostwrite with one of the best celebrity screen writers ever. Reluctantly, Emma dives in…. literally… and moves to LA for a temporary writing assignment.

Being such a big Katherine Center fan, I struggled to give it a 3.5 rating (rounded to 4). She’s amazing. I feel guilty. I thought the plot and characters were above average and possibly even super great. Sadly, she butchered the sensitivity of the Cancer trigger. Living and breathing the family impact of a loved one with Cancer and loving your person so fiercely every single day made my stomach hurt a little finishing this book. I know I am in the minority and several books hit others with various triggers, but this one felt a little different for me. Very seldom are there false alarms. That’s all I’m going to say. I’m still a huge Katherine Center fan and there’s absolutely no animosity

✨ Genre: Romance
🧡 Steamy rating: Very Mild
🤬 Profanity: Mild
🎧 Method: Macmillan Audio Book
📚 2024 book count: 70

Triggers: Cancer, death of a parent, and traumatic brain injury

I LOVE Katherine Center and can confidently say this is my new favourite of hers! The characters, their development, the storyline… all perfect. Center writes character development like no other (aside from my queen Abby Jimenez). I fell into what was going to happen next and was rooting for the characters hard. A++ all around!

Thank you so much Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio for the opportunity to get my hands on this ARC. I am so thankful!

Patti Murin + Katherine Center = PERFECTION.

I already read The Rom-Commers on e-book, but I had to request the audio because I love how Patti Murin embodies Katherine Center's characters. Each character is a distinct voice and her reading of the story naturally evokes the feelings of each scene. You won't regret listening to this audio!

What I loved about The Rom-Commers:
🧡 The fun and colorful cover!! Also helped me to visualize Emma and Charlie
💙 Two screenwriters makes for The PERFECT banter and dialogue!
💛 The meta conversations around rom-coms were so good!! I loved their research of rom-com ingredients 🥰
🧡 Learning how to forgive oneself and that guilt and fear shouldn’t keep us from chasing our dreams !!
💙 Just randomly bumping into celebrities at restaurants and coffee shops because it’s Los Angeles 🙌🏼
💛 There will be always be tragedy in life. Our goal is to LIVE in perspective from it.
🧡 Remembering the time I went line-dancing with friends in college, learned I was terrible at it but had so much fun anyway!!
💙 Emma’s saved collection of the best kisses of cinematic history
💛 Katherine Center is the CHAMPION for joy and fiction and romance.
🧡 A guinea pig named Cuthbert 🥹

And now I want to watch “It Happened One Night” !

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced readers' audiobook copy. All opinions are my own.

Okay, so this is my first Katherine Center novel and I’M OBSESSICA SIMPSON!!! I will definitely be reading more of her in the future. 5/5!!!!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for my ALC in exchange for my honest review!

MY SYNOPSIS
The Rom-Commers is a romantic comedy for the ages. Emma Wheeler, a quirky, aspiring, hopeless romantic screenwriter from Texas, is flown to LA to help Charlie Yates, a successful Hollywood screenwriter who doesn’t believe in love, re-write his version of a romcom script (of a fictional cult-romance movie). Oh, and the best part, Emma has had a huge crush on Charlie for like EVER.

MY REVIEW
The Rom-Commers has every necessary element in order to create the perfect rom-com read; it is creative, and had me laughing out loud, squealing, and crying… this book needs to be made into a movie ASAP. Center nailed the characters and humor with the perfect amount of reality and lightness.

The dynamic between Emma and Charlie is a lot of fun! The reader will immediately fall in love with Emma and her compassion for others, while Charlie will take a bit to love, but it’s not long before we find out how lovely he really is. That goes without saying, but I absolutely love Emma- currently going through withdrawal! Emma is so relatable and I was truly emersed in her entire life story, which I’m sure may can relate to. You will be rooting for her from page one. Patti Murin brought Emma to life and gave her such depth; Emma’s emotions and reactions (both good and bad) were palpable through my phone screen.

Center tells a story that pays homage to romance and romantic comedy; I was (am) charmed and cannot wait to read my next! I can honestly say I felt like I was watching a romantic comedy movie about two screenwriters writing a romantic comedy film. It was absolutely perfect in every way!

There is all of the forced proximity, grumpy x sunshine, and witty banter your romcom heart could dream of.

I just very recently read The Bodyguard and fell in love with the way Katherine Center writes! So when I was given the opportunity to listen to The Rom-Commers early, I was all in. And I just have to say I was so impressed! KC has a very conversational, down-to-earth-yet-not-at-all-cheesy way of writing that is so good and so refreshing! Seriously, she’s awesome, and this book was easily a 5⭐read. This solidifies Katherine Center as one of my must-read authors — that’s how much I enjoyed it. And a note on the audiobook itself: the narration was SO GOOD. I am in love with Emma and Charlie as humans, and I just love their love.

Thank you to Net Galley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC copy and a chance to leave an honest review!

This book was so much fun!
Our main character Emma has spent her last 10 years taking care of her father who was injured in a rock slide that killed her mom. She longs to be a screen writer in LA, but taking care of her dad is her first priority. When her ex boyfriend Logan gives her the opportunity of a life time rewriting a rom-com screenplay with her favorite writer Charlie Yates, her family begs her to take it. Charlie seems to have given up on love. His screenplay doesn't even have a happily ever after! Can Emma change his perspective on his screenplay and maybe even his life?
I really liked Emma. She was so passionate about her family. Her father was her world (and he's such a great father) and her sister is her favorite person. She was also passionate about her work. She did her research and was ready for her break through. She was patient with trying to get Charlie to change his mind and she was sassy and funny. Charlie started out set in his ways, but really warmed up well after a while.
The plot moved along well. We really got to know the characters and I really felt for them when they were happy or sad. There was a lot of character growth for everyone and it was on a believable curve. The ending was wonderful, especially since it's a rom-com.
The narrator of the audiobook was great. She really felt like Emma to me and brought the entire story to life. It was so easy to listen to her.

I liked it, but wasn’t always itching to see what happened so I didn’t rate it as high as I have other contemporary romance books. I liked that the storyline was so different than what I had read, the way the author handled celebrities, cancer, and death. I thought she handled them all in a way that didn’t feel so heavy, but still felt important.

Emma Wheeler loves (like REALLY loves) rom-coms and is an aspiring screenwriter just getting by, wishing and hoping for a break in her career. She lives a noble, if predictable and somewhat lonely life, caretaking her lovely father who needs full time care. She longs to be a successful screenwriter. When an opportunity falls in her lap - a once in a lifetime chance - to rewrite an epically bad script - she desperately wants to make it work. It turns out it actually is her younger sister's turn to help their dad. Can Emma step out of her comfort zone and let go of full control over her dad's care long enough to seize her opportunity? Will it be worth it?

Emma leaves behind her home, routine and father to move to L.A. for six weeks to take the job. When she arrives she's surprised to find out her co-writer doesn't want her there, more does he actually care about the script. Even worse, he thinks love is a joke.

Katherine Center delivers another fantastic romance novel. Full of clever banter, witty and current pop culture references, lovable characters that you're really rooting for packaged up in an engaging, feel-good, plot.

Patti Murin gives a lively & relatable narration of this funny, clever romance. It was 5 stars all around for me.

Emma Wheeler, talented screenwriter and devoted daughter, has just about given up the fight between the two priorities in her life. Her father, injured 10 years before in a climbing accident that Emma carries secret guilt about, needs her constant attention and care in their modest Houston apartment. Or does he? An unexpected offer comes out of the blue from an old friend, now a very well-connected Hollywood agent, to work with top screenwriter Charlie Yates in LA on a script that needs…how shall Logan put it delicately… work.
Em is sorely tempted but who would help her dad? It takes her younger, just graduated from college sister, to give her the push she needs, offering to come home and take over for the 6 weeks the job will require. And so, Em sets off with equal parts fear, trepidation, and fangirling, because Charlie Yates is her screenwriter idol. That illusion lasts until she and Logan are at the doorstep of Charlie’s Beverly Hills mansion, and then bursts in his immediate and negative reaction. She didn’t see that coming, but then, neither did he from his side of the situation.
Enemies to lovers trope: check (double, triple check). Outstanding narration by Patti Murin, capturing all the humor, tension, pathos, and glee: check (infinite number of checks). Does Ms. Murin’s narration convey nuance and easily glide between the distinctive voices of the characters? Yes! Does it also reveal Ms. Center’s propensity for rhetorical questions? Yes (but by that point, I’m in, hook line and sinker, so.. so what?)
Katherine Center expertly ratchets up both the narrative tension and romantic entanglement in carefully plotted spirals that weave together so seamlessly that it truly takes a second reading (or listening) to go back and catch all the breadcrumbs that she’s dropped in. The happily ever after is a given trope for the genre – in this case, not only for the initially doomed remake screenplay for “It Happened One Night”, which Em bluntly tells Charlie is apocalyptically bad, but for Em and Charlie’s own relationship, which moves from antipathy to reluctant partnership, and then (carefully navigating the traumas that both have experienced in their lives), to a new understanding and a new relationship that survives some pretty rocky waters.
Highly, highly recommended.

4.5 stars rounded up.
Oh. My. Gosh. I enjoyed this romcom so much! I loved the snarky humor, the main female character, and I absolutely loved the epilogue. Emma, the main character, tells the story from her point of view, and we get every bit of detail and thought that she has. Occasionally, I feel like this can be boring in a novel, but not so with this one. The secondary characters in the story were really well defined, and I became just as interested in them as I was in Emma.
This story came to me by way of audiobook, and I felt that the narrator did a good job conveying feeling and character differences.

Pick this book up when it publishes June 11th. When you get to the epilogue, make sure you're paying attention to Emma's dad and the message he has about marriage. Stronger truth could not be told. ❤️
Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin's Press, for the ALC, and the opportunity to provide an honest review.

Enemies to lovers romance about two people writing a romantic comedy screenplay together sounded fun but omg this was bad. The main girl was so annoying (I guess having curly red hair is a personality trait??) and the main guy was just an asshole. Nothing about it was funny or charming, the author tried way too hard to make all the characters quirky. And to top it all off, one of the dumbest endings I’ve ever read. I hate finished it. Big fat nope from me!

Most people who follow my reading life know my love for this author which has burned strong since I first read Happiness for Beginners in 2016 - she just hasn't ever let me down as a reader and to watch so many other people fall in love with her lovely characters and beautiful writing makes me so happy!

I read The Rom-Commers on my kindle in January thanks to @netgalley and @stmartinspress and then I was craving a reread so I listened to it on audio this week narrated by the wonderful  @pattimurin and I loved it just as much, if not more! There are so many great things about this book and I think it just works so well for us romance readers. It's immensely funny, so swoony and sweet, but it's also so sad at certain moments (I cried), unpredictable even though there is the expected Happily Ever After, and it just feels like a warm hug I could always seek out on a cold day. 

Emma and Charlie experience a unique forced proximity situation (Katherine Center excels at this) and the entire plot centers around rewriting a rom-com movie. There's lots of discussion about what makes a romantic comedy what it is. There sre other moments where the meaning of love is discussed. There are famous people and awards and aspirations and fearful moments. The pace of the plot is perfect and the supporting cast of characters are essential and enchanting.
I cannot wait to own this one in print with its gorgeous pink sprayed edges in a month! I highly recommend checking out that hardcover to buy
Also - don't skip the author's note on this one - I didn't get it the first time in the early copy of the advanced read but it's in the audiobook and it is UTTER PERFECTION and may or may not have triggered a Katherine Center personal re-readathon
Here's just one breathtaking quote as a teaser:

“You had to maximize joy when it fluttered into your life. You had to honor it. And savor it. And not stomp it to death by reminding everyone of everything you'd lost.”

What a delight this book was! Even knowing details of the premise and plot going in, I was constantly surprised by the turns and beats the story took. Some may have been a bit dramatic, but it was nicely balanced with levity - there’s a Guinea pig! And line dancing!

Emma was completely endearing, and after a series of false starts, Charlie will win you over. Hopefully as a reader, you pick up on his gestures of affection before Emma does…she’s clearly a words of affirmation gal and not acts of service, cause his actions were SCREAMING and she was deaf to them lol

Patti Murin gave an incredible narration as always! Thank you to Katherine Center for this love letter to love stories and to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ALC!

We have long established that I am hit or miss with romances; I love some, and some, I want to slap the characters. I know Emma Wheeler could write one I love, especially when writing with THE Charlie Yates.

Emma has had to put her dreams on the back burner to take care of her father and make sure her younger sister lives out her dreams. It doesn’t mean she has quit writing; it’s just that she is doing it from Texas, not California. Well, she isn’t sending those stories out…maybe one day. That one day comes when her long-time best friend (who happens to be Charlie Yates’ manager) tricks them into writing together. We hear great banter, see fear, and is that feeling blooming?

Patti Murin is a fantastic narrator for The Rom-Commers. At times, I giggled, cried, and held my breath.

Thank you, NetGalley and Macmillan Audio, for this advanced audio copy!

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.

The audio version of this is matched rather well offering a connection to readers that is both fitting yet slightly different from what you may imagine initially.

I really enjoyed this book. Katherine Center and Patti Murin were the narrators of and they held my attention through the whole book. I love when narrators have such entertaining voices. The characters in this story were well written. Emma and Charles characters were likable and relatable. This book checks all the right boxes for a terrific Rom-Com story. It's funny, sad, endearing, and simply an all-around great read. I didn't want to stop listening to this book. I would HIGHLY recommend this book. I look forward to reading more of Katherine Center's books.


Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan audio for allowing me to listen to this ARC for my honest opinion.

I loved this audiobook! Such a fun and cute plot, and in my opinion, it's the perfect summer read! Katherine Center is a definite go-to for a light-hearted, romance novel.

I appreciate the publisher and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to listen to this book in exchange for an honest review.

2.5 Stars ✨

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martins Press for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Audio 🎧 version

“You had to maximize joy when it fluttered into your life. You had to honor it. And savor it. And not stomp it to death by reminding everyone of everything you'd lost.”

I was so excited to score this audio arc. I have loved Centers books in the past so I couldn’t wait to read this one! While I did enjoy parts of it, I didn’t love it. It felt a bit different from her previous books. I didn’t get the same vibe from this one as I normally have in the past. I have also seen some reviews called it “clean”, I personally wouldn’t consider this book as a “clean romance” not because it’s dirty, but because of some of the subject matter dealing with sex, drinking, innuendos and language. So I guess it’s up to personal preference. I still enjoy centers writing, and look forward to trying her again in the future.