Someone Just Like You

May 1, 2023
Schorr (As Seen on TV) weaves a sweet but predictable contemporary romance about childhood adversaries who discover as adults that they’ve always dated people who reminded them of each other. The Blum and Stark siblings grew up across the street from each other in suburban New Jersey and were inseparable thanks to their mothers’ close friendship—though the youngest children, Molly Blum and Jude Stark, never got along. Now the combined sibling sextet want to plan a joint anniversary party for their parents, and Molly and Jude are put in charge of finding a venue in N.Y.C. Though this collaboration initially consists of an immature prank war, Molly slowly confides her career angst to Jude and is surprised to get good advice while Jude learns that Molly is a real person behind her perfect, people-pleaser veneer. This newfound mutual understanding is accompanied by an ever-present attraction that they finally stop denying when they put together the truth about their previous relationships. It’s a cute but sketchy premise, and though there are some charming moments (and some sizzling sex scenes), the story drags in the middle. Still, the enemies-to-lovers trope is evergreen. This will find an audience with fans of Sally Thorne and Tessa Bailey. Agent: Melissa Edwards, Stonesong.

June 1, 2023
A lawyer must stop litigating the past to find love in the present. The Blum and Stark families have been thickly intertwined for years, since they moved in across the street from each other in Hoboken, New Jersey, when their kids were small. Now, Molly Blum and Jude Stark's older siblings have decided to join forces to throw a joint wedding anniversary party for their parents. Although Jude and Molly once got along as well as the rest of their families, their friendship dissolved abruptly when they were children. Molly became locked into a war of nasty pranks with Jude until a life-altering incident precipitated an uneasy truce between the warring parties. But meeting a decade after the d�tente, and especially being forced to tour prospective party venues together, reignites their old animosity. Molly and Jude are on the brink of descending into a familiar rivalry when they consciously decide to put a halt to their antics. Forced to look at Jude from a new perspective, Molly realizes that not only has she consistently been dating men who remind her of her childhood friend-turned-enemy, but also that she has long been nursing a sexual attraction for Jude. Molly decides to act on her growing feelings, but their shared history might just block her way to a future with the man she has always desired. Since the story is told entirely from Molly's point of view, the rivalry at its center seems half-baked, and the shift in the protagonists' attitudes toward each other, ill-explained and abrupt. The resolution of Molly's familial and romantic troubles strikes a flat note, but her professional struggles ring with authenticity. Schorr builds an entertaining world with interesting secondary characters but is unable to convincingly map the trajectory of the protagonists' evolving relationship. An enemies-to-lovers romance that engages neither with complexities of animosity nor the simplicity of love.

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June 1, 2023

New Yorker Molly Blum has her life all planned out. She has a successful career, a great relationship with her family, and an apartment around the corner from her best friend. When she is abruptly reunited with her childhood friend turned high school nemesis, Jude Stark, as their siblings force them to plan a joint anniversary party for their parents, all of Molly's well-laid plans are turned upside down. Molly and Jude quickly return to their childhood pranks but find that there might be more to their relationship than they ever thought possible, especially when they both realize that they've only ever dated each other's doppelgangers. They will have to move past years of hurting each other in order to discover the attraction that's been there all along. The plot suffers from some uneven pacing, and several of the one-dimensional secondary characters are easily confused with each other. However, readers will love Molly and Jude's delightful banter and Schorr's (As Seen on TV) realistic portrayal of their relationship and its challenges, which give this satisfying rom-com a well-earned happily-ever-after. VERDICT Perfect for fans of Abby Jimenez and rom-coms with quirky heroines.--Whitney Kramer

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