UNLIKELY STORY
by Ali Rosen
A therapist finds herself torn between two men: one too good to be true, and the other who couldn’t be more wrong.
Eleanora Fischer is in love with a man she’s never met...technically. For the past seven years, Nora, a New York therapist, has been writing an advice column for a London-based newspaper, and every Tuesday she gets edits for Ask Eleanora via a Google Doc from her copy editor, known only as “J.W.” Though they’ve never chatted outside of a word-processing document, Nora feels a deep connection with J and cherishes their witty, often personal banter, though she’s afraid that revealing her feelings would ruin the relationship. When her boss at the Sunday Tribune invites her to London at the end of the summer, Nora will finally have a chance to meet J in person. With a planned meetup on the horizon, all Nora has to do is survive the next few months dealing with her cranky new neighbor, a surly Brit named Eli Whitman. He’s just moved in upstairs and is already wreaking havoc, hammering away and submitting plans to build a rooftop party zone in Nora’s quiet Greenwich Village co-op. And the cherry on top? Eli is a former—disgruntled—client of Nora’s from a couple’s therapy session that ended up with him getting dumped mid-appointment. He seems hellbent on destroying her peace and quiet, though Nora is up for the challenge. And she can’t help but notice that this prickly Englishman is quite handsome, though, personality-wise, he’s everything J isn’t. Is her connection with J all in her head, and, either way, how could she now be falling for his complete opposite? Rosen’s enemies-to-lovers romance is a delightfully modern take on You’ve Got Mail, mixed with the kind of will-they, won’t-they sort-of love triangle that’s the bread and butter of all rom-coms. Eli is a dashing crankster with a backstory, Nora is a therapist with vulnerabilities, and J is the mysterious perfect man who always knows what to say—and readers will be eating it up happily.
A swoonworthy romance reminiscent of a Nora Ephron movie.