I'm Kea Miyakina-Tees. This is NPR's Book of the Day. This next book finds inspiration in the headlines and hookups of celebrity love affairs. How is it that talented but arguably average-looking dudes end up with super glam celebrity it girls? Pete Davidson, Colin Jost, Curtis Sittenfeld

is talking about you. Her new book, Romantic Comedy, offers a fun gender reversal of this

trope. The main character, Sally Mills, a writer for a very popular weekly sketch TV show,

unexpectedly experiences sparks and maybe love with pop star Noah Brewster, who is guesting on the show.

Here's Settinfeld talking to NPR's Juana Summers about writing Midwestern women into romance.

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Romantic comedies can often get a bad rep. For the few truly great ones out there, there are a lot of

releases that just fall flat due to poor execution. The storyline is just a little too cute or cheesy. The writing is

totally cringe. The person at the center is unrelatable. But here's a secret. I love a good,

satisfying romantic comedy. And so does author Curtis Sittenfeld. She says that for a rom-com to really work,

it has to be plausible and there has to be some genuine connection between the two people.

And then if they have sparkling, witty banter between them, that never hurts.

Sittenfeld's latest book called Romantic Comedy opens on the set of a sketch comedy show that's a lot like Saturday Night Live.

The book explores what happens when sparks fly between a writer named Sally and Noah, a pop star who's a celebrity guest host on the show.

I started by asking Sittenfeld to tell me more about Sally.

So, Sally is very successful professionally.

She was married in her early 20s and divorced and has been single for a while and is sort of settling romantically but is, you know, ambitious professionally.

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