What Nora Knew

What Nora Knew is an entertaining homage to Nora Ephron's rom-com movies, complete with The Dull but Well-Meaning Wrong Guy, The Obvious (to everyone but the heroine) Right Guy, the Big Misunderstanding, and the Grand Gesture. It garners a few chuckles but won't linger long in the memory.

Author Linda Yellin is a very funny woman. That doesn't mean she is a great writer. Her scenes contain plenty of witty dialogue and wacky predicaments, but they don't always do much to propel the story forward. And her characterizations don't have a whole lot of depth, although I appreciate the fact that her heroine is a gutsy, talented writer instead of a ditzy Meg Ryan clone.

Although I thought it was cute, the book frustrated me, much like Sleepless in Seattle, because the heroine and Mr. Right don't get much of a chance to have a real relationship. I never understood why people find Sleepless to be such a great romance, when Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan don't even meet until the very end. To me a real love story shows the hero and heroine overcoming obstacles to reach a HEA, and this book's heroine has another boyfriend for almost three-quarters of the novel, so that obviously can't happen. The journey is primarily about the heroine deciding that she deserves something better than a passionless relationship, and one is left to wonder if the relationship with Mr. Right will have any staying power. But that's putting too great an expectation on a Hollywood rom-com, or on this book.