If you can finish the following without hesitation:
Must Love ____
When Harry Met ____
and
If you can’t help but stop channel surfing when Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, or Colin Firth is on the screen…
this is the PERFECT book to get you into a swoon-y state of mind!
From Hollywood with Love is a thoroughly researched and fascinating look behind the curtain of some of Hollywood’s biggest successes in the rom-com genre. It also explores HOW the genre evolved, where it’s been, how it flopped (temporarily) and the rise of the new generation of rom-com, on both the small screen and silver screen. Meslow explores the tropes, good, bad, and ugly, and doesn’t shy from topics like the limited representation we’ve seen up until recent years, the mercurial nature of some of your favorite actors, actresses, directors, and writers (and the will of steel of others!), and how quickly Hollywood can turn on a dime when execs smell a success (or a failure) to be. The book covers quite a bit of ground, from the eighties until today, but never dwells on any one film for TOO long.
The funniest thing I discovered while reading this one is that as big a rom-com fan as I am? SO many movies discussed in this book I haven’t even seen! Heard of them, absolutely. All were chosen carefully, and had some impact on the zeitgeist. What this also led me to realize is I have a LOT of ‘homework’ to do after reading this book to get caught up…AND I am just enough of a movie nerd to thoroughly enjoy this book regardless! One minor point: mention is made of Love, Simon and that the director wanted the film to have a happy ending etc….but NO mention is made that Love, Simon is an adaptation of Becky Albertalli’s Simon and the Homo Sapiens Agenda…where the ending has already been spelled out. (This probably bugged me since I’m an Albertalli fan and loved the source material). However, if this is the only quibble I had with this book, I’d say Meslow thoroughly wooed me!
So settle in with some popcorn and a box of candy, or perhaps a pint of Häagen-Dazs, crank up Red Rain, and take a journey down rom-com lane…after all, you just KNOW you’ll get a happy ending! 😉
4 stars
Many thanks to NetGalley, Dey Street Books, and Scott Meslow for a gifted copy of this book!
#NetGalley @deystreet @ScottMeslow
alternatively titled... 