THE ROM-COMMERS

by Katherine Center

St. Martin's Press

5/13/25

Romance

Paperback, 352 pages

“For a good cry, many laughs and a big hit of dopamine, read The Rom-Commers, a story about an aspiring screenwriter looking for real-life love. I’m a massive Katherine Center fan and this book is her best yet.”

-Emily Giffin

"Winsome and charming, Center's latest is that perfect blend of romance and overcoming life challenges that her readers treasure."

-Booklist (starred review)

She’s rewriting his love story. But can she rewrite her own?

Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a screenwriter. She’s spent her life studying, obsessing over, and writing romantic comedies—good ones! That win contests! But she’s also been the sole caretaker for her kind-hearted dad, who needs full-time care. Now, when she gets a chance to re-write a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates—The Charlie Yates! Her personal writing god!—it’s a break too big to pass up.

Emma’s younger sister steps in for caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for six weeks for the writing gig of a lifetime. But what is it they say? Don’t meet your heroes? Charlie Yates doesn’t want to write with anyone—much less “a failed, nobody screenwriter.” Worse, the romantic comedy he’s written is so terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus! He doesn’t even care about the script—it’s just a means to get a different one green-lit. Oh, and he thinks love is an emotional Ponzi scheme.

But Emma’s not going down without a fight. She will stand up for herself, and for rom-coms— and for love/She will convince him that love stories matter—even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But what if that kiss is accidentally amazing? What if real life turns out to be so much more real than fiction? What if the love story they’re writing breaks all Emma’s rules—and comes true?

Dear Reader,

I used to think writers weren’t allowed to write about writers—like it would be unimaginative. But as soon as a story about Emma and Charlie—two screenwriters who have to write a romantic comedy together, even though he doesn’t believe in love—came into my head, I had to write it. It grabbed hold of my heart and wouldn’t let go, and writing this novel turned out to be some of the most fun I’ve ever had. 

At the start of the story, Charlie is so pompous about writing, dismissive of Emma, and convinced that love is a Ponzi scheme —and Emma is the opposite of all those things. She sets out to prove herself to Charlie, and to stand up for love, and maybe even to humble him a little bit— and she does it. Emma’s courage and Charlie’s transformation are the heart of this story for me. Emma says all the things to Charlie that I always want to shout to the world: that love matters. That it’s the best thing humanity has ever invented. That we’d all be a lot better off if we took it seriously. And that love stories make us better at love, and better at life. She says all those things, and he hears them. And then he is conquered—in the best, most glorious way.

I think of my stories as half women’s fiction and half romance. They always feature complicated people wrestling with complicated things who find love amid everything. But the love isn’t tangential. It’s essential to the story. Love makes my characters brave, and it forces them to confront their fears, figure out what really matters, and become better people in the face of it all. 

Just ask Emma, and she’ll tell you. That’s what love stories are for: to lift us up, and to give us hope, and to remind us of the glorious, precious, blissed-out, fleeting joy of it all.

Katherine Center

Emma and Charlie do a lot of cooking in The Rom-Commers. Most of it is the ordinary, day-to-day kind where you just have to figure out what’s for dinner. They go to the store and snake the aisles. They tease each other about Twinkies. They carry in bags of groceries and put them away in the pantry. It’s a lovely way that they fall in sync with each other.

But two of the meals they eat stand out. First, the birthday canned-biscuit doughnuts that Charlie makes for Emma, even though he cannot cook, and tries to open the canned biscuits with a can opener. Next, the special dinner Emma cooks for Charlie: Beef Wellington and roasted vegetables, a lemon and rosemary tart for dessert, and a bottle of Champagne. They don’t wind up eating this food, of course. Something far more interesting happens. But it’s the best meal in the story nonetheless. 

Katherine Center

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