Calendar Girls: February 2020

Hey all, Dani here.

Welcome back to another very early post for me. Same as with last month, this post is going live while I’m deep asleep, but I want to make sure that all of the participants in Calendar Girls can link to my post as soon as possible, so why not have this post go up at midnight my time? I’m so glad to be involved with Calendar Girls; I feel like my relationships in the online book community have been grown and strengthened by this blog event, and that my blog has developed far more than I imagined because of it as well.

Anyway, it is the first Monday of the Month and that means it is once again time for a Calendar Girls post.

Calendar Girls is a monthly blog event that was started by Flavia and Melanie, but is now being hosted by Katie and Adrienne. They are all wonderful ladies, and you should check out their lovely blogs. Okay, so Katie and Adrienne needed to take a brief hiatus for a few months, so for right now Flavia and myself are temporarily hosting Calendar Girls until our fearless leaders are ready to step back in.

Honestly Calendar Girls is a group effort and I feel like we have become a pretty good group of friends, so it makes sense that we can share in the responsibilities and pick up any slack should it happen. I’m happy to do my part to help keep this tradition going. So if you link back to Flavia and me, we can keep track of all the book picks and posts each month. Thanks, everyone!

First, more about the Calendar Girls. It is designed to ignite bookish discussions among readers, and was inspired by the 1961 Neil Sedaka song, Calendar Girl.

Just like the song, each month has a different theme. Each blogger picks their favorite book from the theme, and on the first Monday of the month reveals their pick in a Calendar Girls post. Make sure to post back to the hostess’s post, and both Katie and Adrienne will make a master list for the month. The master lists allow everyone to see the other Calendar Girls’ picks and to pop on over to their blogs. Thus, we all get to chat about books and even make some new friends!

Oh, and you don’t have to identify as female to join the Calendar Girls. We welcome readers of all types. So if this sounds like fun for you, join us in all of the fun bookish conversations.

Finally, the February theme is…

Meet Cute

Favorite Romantic Comedy

So several years ago I joined an online book club–called Vaginal Fantasy Book Club–and started reading a lot more romance, but most of it was genre romance. It’s not that I didn’t like to read romance, but for the most part I preferred stories where romance wasn’t the main focus of the story. When it comes to romance stories I tend to enjoy watching rom-coms instead of reading them. But I’ve been doing a little better over recent years.

So, some of the books on my contender list may not technically be listed as romantic comedies, but they are mostly focused on romance and there were at least a few moments that made me laugh.

All right, here are my contenders for favorite romantic comedies.

I think it’s a pretty nice blend of both Young Adult and Adult romances, and okay, yes, clearly Christina Lauren takes up quite a bit of space on this list. What can I say? I find their stories to be very enjoyable with plenty of fun moments. And I think I have reviews for most of these, so I’ll link to those just in case.

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord, Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey, Frankly in Love by David Yoon, Roomies by Christina Lauren, Again, But Better by Christine Riccio, The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren, Geekerella by Ashley Poston, My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren.

These books utilize a lot of different set-ups that make for funny encounters and memorable stories. Fake relationships are definitely prominent in several of these books. A few of the characters are adorably awkward, and that awkwardness is amusing and endearing, so those situations definitely make me chuckle.

Okay, are you ready for my pick for this month?

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What’s super great about this one is if you like the idea of meet cutes this book is chock full of them…or rather it’s filled with failed meet cutes, but that just makes it more amusing.

My review for this book will be coming soon, but I read it last month and while some of it was immensely predictable, overall it was simply outstanding. Getting to watch our lady protagonist as she utilizes as many movie meet cutes as she can as a way to try and prove to a screenwriter that these stories are real and worthwhile. I don’t want to talk too much about this book right now, because as I said my review is not yet up, but I’ll go ahead and drop the summary and just go ahead and say that I definitely recommend this book. It is fun and cute, and ultimately is a feel-good romantic story that honors all the rom-coms that came before it.

In this charming, feel-good debut novel, a cynical assistant at a screenwriting agency must reenact the meet-cute scenes from classic romantic comedy movies in order to help her #1 client get his scriptwriting mojo back–but can a real-life meet-cute be in store for someone who doesn’t believe in happily ever after?

After seven years as an assistant, 29-year-old Evie Summers is ready to finally get the promotion she deserves. But now the TV and film agency she’s been running behind the scenes is in trouble, and Evie will lose her job unless she can convince the agency’s biggest and most arrogant client, Ezra Chester, to finish writing the script for a Hollywood romantic comedy.

The catch? Ezra is suffering from writer’s block–and he’ll only put pen to paper if singleton Evie can prove to him that you can fall in love like they do in the movies. With the future of the agency in jeopardy, Evie embarks on a mission to meet a man the way Sally met Harry or Hugh Grant met Julia Roberts.

But in the course of testing out the meet-cute scenes from classic romantic comedies IRL, not only will Evie encounter one humiliating situation after another, but she’ll have to confront the romantic past that soured her on love. In a novel as hilarious as it is heartwarming, debut author Rachel Winters proves that sometimes real life is better than the movies–and that the best kind of meet-cutes happen when you least expect them.

Calendar Girls Picks

Flavia @ Flavia the Bibliophile – My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows AND The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

Dani (that’s me) @ MousaiBooks – Would Like to Meet by Rachel Winters

Adrienne @ Darque Dreamer Reads – My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows

Deanna @ Deanna Writes About – When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

Ashley @ Inside My Minds – The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

Lindsey @ Lindsey Reads – The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

Katie @ Never Not Reading – Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey

More added soon.