Blog Tour: Just Some Stupid Love Story | Katelyn Doyle | Book Review and Author Q&A

Anyone who has read enough of a particular genre knows the signs well enough to recognize when they might be experiencing one in real life (that is why I firmly do not trust nice guys—they are always the killer!). In Katelyn Doyle’s charming debut novel, Just Some Stupid Love Story, a woman who makes her living on rom coms thinks she can avoid falling into the tropes she knows so well. She doesn’t believe in love stories, and he believes in them all too much. Are they ill-fated or destined to be?

Make sure to check out the Q&A with the author, Katelyn Doyle, after my review!

What is Just Some Stupid Love Story about?

Molly Marks writes Hollywood rom-coms for a living—which is how she knows “romance” is a racket. The one and only time she was naive enough to fall in love was with her high school boyfriend, Seth—who she ghosted on the eve of graduation and hasn’t seen in fifteen years.

Seth Rubinstein believes in love, the grand, fated kind, despite his job as, well…one of Chicago’s most successful divorce attorneys. Over the last decade, he’s sought “the one” in countless bad dates and rushed relationships. He knows his soulmate is out there. But so far, no one can compare to Molly Marks, the first girl who broke his heart.

When Molly’s friends drag her to Florida for their fifteenth high school reunion, it is poetic justice that she’s forced to sit with Seth. Too many martinis and a drunken hookup later, they decide to make a bet: whoever can predict the fate of five couples before the next reunion must declare that the other is right about true love. The catch? The fifth couple is the two of them.

Molly assures Seth they are a tale of timeless heartbreak. Seth promises she’ll end up hopelessly in love with him. She thinks he’s delusional. He has five years to prove her wrong.

Wickedly funny, sexy, and brimming with laughs and heart like the best romantic comedies, Just Some Stupid Love Story is for everyone who believes in soulmates—even if they would never admit it.

What did I think?

Rom-coms are Molly Marks’s thing. It seems that someone who works so extensively on a genre all about romance would be a believer in true love, but skeptical Molly in her all black get ups couldn’t be further from a believer. In fact, she’s at best a skeptic. Meanwhile Seth Rubinstein practices “family law” (which is a polite way he tries to use to describe divorce). Seth is far from a skeptic about soulmates, though. He’s a believer! And possibly his ex-love interest who he’s never quite gotten over could be his. Molly, naturally, disagrees.

It was a fun little twist that the opposites-attract featured a romance-hater whose career is built around romance, while a romance-believer has a career built around the dissolution of marriages. Opposites attract, even in their career choices! Of course these two have a lot to work through if they are going to have any chance to make it to their happy-ever-after. Molly dumped Seth in high school brutally and without explanation, leaving him sad and confused. They never spoke again.

Molly seems tough on the exterior—she has a wall up that protects how vulnerable she can be from the outside. But inside Molly is a relatable character with emotions, doubts, and fear of getting hurt swirling around. Chapters alternate between Molly’s and Seth’s perspectives, giving the reader insight into their perspectives on their relationship, break up, and reunion.

They hook up. Of course they hook up! They have unresolved feelings, irresistible attraction, and a few too many tropical drinks at their high school reunion for the night to end any other way. And despite Molly resisting it, they’re in their own rom-com. Her challenge is to try to circumvent the cute moments she knows so well from escalating into something scary—love.

Molly is so certain that she won’t fall for Seth, and Seth is so certain she will, that they make a bet. Predict the fate of five couples from high school, including themselves. The book chronicles their interactions over the next five years. The emails, the texts, the phone calls, and the in-person encounters. The banter between Molly and Seth is a highlight of the book. Seth is very sappy but in a sweet way. Molly is a bit too closed off for me (a total softie) to relate to. I found her infuriating a lot of the time, but she won me over with what an amazing caring friend she is. Doyle also includes a good background on how Molly ended up so averse to love and vulnerability.

Charming and funny!

Also as a side note, Molly has a salad (actually The Salad) that involves dark curly kale, garlic-parmesan dressing, avocado, grapes, and pepitas with chicken that not only sounds close to my personal favorite salad–the Kale Salad that Started it All by chef Joshua McFadden–but also delicious! I’m going to try to make The Salad for dinner tonight (though Molly only eats it for lunch).

Thank you to Flatiron Books for my copy. Opinions are my own.

Q&A with Katelyn Doyle

Q: Tell us a bit about Just Some Stupid Love Story and where the idea for this novel came from.

A: Just Some Stupid Love story is the tale of two exes, a hopelessly romantic divorce attorney looking for his soul mate and a romance-averse rom-com screenwriter who doesn’t believe in them. She broke his heart as a teenager, he never forgot her, and when they drunkenly hook up at their fifteen-year high school reunion, he proposes a bet: whoever can predict who among their old classmates will still be together at their twentieth reunion has to admit the other is right about true love. But he adds a twist: one of the couples he predicts will end up together is the two of them. (She, as you can imagine, vehemently disagrees.) And so we begin a When Harry Met Sally-style five year journey across friendships, hookups, breakups, heartbreak and infatuation until our characters must decide who is right about their chance for a happily ever after.

The idea for Molly, my cynical-screenwriter character, was a bit inspired by…me! When you write romance, people often assume you’re a deep-in-your-feelings true love evangelist—you believe in love at first sight and swoon for grand gestures and weep over especially touching car insurance commercials. I, however, am allergic to public displays of emotion, sarcastic to the point that my friends call me “The Dark Lord” and often troll my husband by solemnly telling him the love of my life is our cat. On the surface, I seem more like a person who would write about serial murders than love affairs. But that is because my prickly shell guards a soft and tender heart—sometimes it’s easier to navigate big feelings on the page than to admit you want them in real life. I wanted to write a character who feels this way, and Molly Marks was born.

And so, of course, I wanted to give her a suitor who adores her despite her thorny approach to love. And who better to fall for a grumpy, romance-hating rom-com writer than a sweet, lovesick divorce attorney? Enter Seth Rubenstein!

Q: Without giving away any spoilers, what was one of your favorite scenes in the book to write?

A: Hands-down the opening at the high-school reunion, because it was so fun to set up Seth and Molly’s personalities and chemistry. (Him making her dance to NSYNC is a moment I’m truly proud of, ha!) Second place goes to the scene at Dodger Stadium. I’m not a sports person but I live in LA and love the vibe of Dodgers games, so writing a scene set at one was exhilarating, even if I needed my husband to fact-check it to make sure I didn’t mess up the actual rules of baseball.

Q: Romance has always been a popular genre, but it feels like more people are reading it now than ever before. When did you first discover romance, and what are some of the books and authors that got you into the genre?

A: I’ve been madly in love with romance from a very tender age—I secretively started stealing my grandmother’s torrid Fabio-covered paperbacks from her bookshelf when I was eleven years. She loved historical romances so that was my introduction—the first book I can recall reading is the iconic Whitney My Love by Judith McNaught. (It has, um, not aged well but it’s a compulsively compelling read and a fascinating text if you’re interested in the gender dynamics of the 80s.) I also loved Johanna Lindsay and Catherine Coulter. From there I branched out into the contemporary books of the day—cozy family saga series by Nora Roberts, romantic suspense by Sandra Brown, and the soapy, sexy oeuvre of Jayne Ann Krentz.

Q: Can you tell us a little about your writing routine? Where and when do you most like to write?

A: I usually write from about noon to five or six, always on my tattered living room couch, and always with my cat and a selection of about five beverages nearby. But I’m not a “MUST WRITE EVERY DAY” type of writer…I tend to follow my creative impulses. If there’s a day I don’t feel like writing I don’t stress about it (unless I’m on deadline) because I feel like my brain probably needs a break to do background work. (Rebecca Solnit once wrote “writing is not typing” and I firmly believe this to be gospel.) And if I feel like holing up for an entire weekend and downloading my whole brain into my laptop, I jump on the opportunity to follow the muse.