Love Literary Style

Gillespie (Girl Meets Class) charms with a lively tale of opposites attracting. Atlanta college English instructor Aaron Mite is a serious novelist who thinks genre fiction is pure trash. His literary-critic father has him convinced his writing is mediocre. Young widow Laurie Lee, a self-published romance author with mainstream publishing dreams, can’t think of anything she’d love more than to become a bestseller. After Aaron and Laurie meet at a Georgia writer’s colony—where he and the organizers mistakenly think she’s an award-winning literary author named Laura T. Leer—Aaron quickly falls for the bubbly blond. Even after Aaron discovers that the beauty next door writes in a genre he despises, their relationship continues swimmingly—until Laurie hits it big, Unsurprisingly, Aaron has a tough time dealing with her success, given that his own prospects aren’t promising. Aaron’s jealousy rings very true, and Laurie is no flimsy stereotypical heroine; she’s glib and bubbly on the surface, but dealing with real pain underneath it all. Gillespie’s take on this familiar trope is buoyed by sympathetic characters, a well-executed if slightly overused theme, and a strong cast of supporting characters. (Nov.)