The Roughest Draft by Emily Wibberly and Austin Siegemund-Broka

Reviewed by GGGinny

What I drank: Plenty of seltzers. It’s a Friday after a long week and I’m very comfortable sitting at home after having a few.

Goodreads Overview:

They were cowriting literary darlings until they hit a plot hole that turned their lives upside down.

Three years ago, Katrina Freeling and Nathan Van Huysen were the brightest literary stars on the horizon, their cowritten books topping bestseller lists. But on the heels of their greatest success, they ended their partnership on bad terms, for reasons neither would divulge to the public. They haven’t spoken since, and never planned to, except they have one final book due on contract.

Facing crossroads in their personal and professional lives, they’re forced to reunite. The last thing they ever thought they’d do again is hole up in the tiny Florida town where they wrote their previous book, trying to finish a new manuscript quickly and painlessly. Working through the reasons they’ve hated each other for the past three years isn’t easy, especially not while writing a romantic novel.

While passion and prose push them closer together in the Florida heat, Katrina and Nathan will learn that relationships, like writing, sometimes take a few rough drafts before they get it right.

Drunk Overview: Katrina Freeling and Nathan Van Huysen were a great writing team until they called it quits after their second novel. For multiple reasons, they’re getting back together to finish out their contract.

Drunk Thoughts: This is the most pretentious and boring book that I’ve read it a hell of a long time.

• Like, I’m going to try not to harp on this, but it felt like they were trying to write the next literary fiction darling rather than write an actual romance novel.
• There are these portions where each character is waxing poetic about the way the other person writes with these long diatribes about the beauty and how they put themselves into their writing and it’s so unique. And… look. all of that can be true. Maybe they’re such a good writer that light from the heaven’s shines out of their ass, that’s not what I’m reading a romance novel for.
• The two main characters are fairly one-dimensional as it is. you have the character that only feels passion for writing and the other who doesn’t know who they are.
• The attempts to give the characters additional depth doesn’t really do much for them.
• There’s a friend who is introduced but really only mentioned to grow Katrina and Nathan, and really feels extraneous.
• Plus there’s the shittty fiance and the ex-wife who never really appear to have anything outside of, yet again, bland characterizations that exist purely to drive our main characters.
• But, and I’m going to come back to talking about how this book thinks it’s way more profound than it is, the narrative of the book follows the narrative they decide to create for their own story.
• That’s something that I think can work really well. (the movie Sideways does this in a beautiful and subtle way so that you don’t necessarily notice the meta commentary until later in the film).
• But the irritating thing is that this book seems to think it’s readers needs to have things like this explained to them otherwise they may not pick up on it.
• So, the plot.
• Look, there are a few story lines that show up A LOT in romance novels. And two people who break apart and come back together is a pretty common one.
• (and done right, I am a SUCKER for it)
• But this book missed so many marks. As I’ve mentioned the two main characters aren’t that interesting. But not much was added to the plot. There were no external reasons to falling apart. And frankly, their reason for breaking up in the first place had me rolling my eyes.
• For how much they loved each others writing they also sure clearly didn’t actually respect each other.
• I guess that part of the problem was that I didn’t believe in their realtionship.
• Peopel say the opposite of love is hate (as in strong emotion to strong emotion) but large portions of this book felt more like apathy or frustration.
• It also ran into the problem of people just not fuckign talking to each other? Which is not my favorite in the best of scenarios.
• And then into the world building. I’ve mentioned the characters weren’t strong, but the world-building also made no sense to me.
• Look, I love books. But I find it hard to believe that Vanity Fair is going to give a shit about a writing duo that put out two decently acclaimed books then disappearing.
• Donna Tartt wrote the Golfdinch which was raved about and I know she’s put out another book but I don’t know what it was. Frankly, even if Steven King stopped writing books at his ridiculous pace, I still don’t think tat would make a cover of a nationwide, non-book magazine.
• It felt like the writers were trying so hard to make this fit the book space when the original idea was for them to be actors or directors or some other creative field that the wider public tends to look at.
• But even more than that, this book failed at what I think the basic premise of a romance is. You should want to root for the main couple to get together.
• And god, these two would be a horrible couple. They don’t know how to communicate (even once the book is over), they both make the same kind of bad decisions, and frankly I didn’t understand why they were interested in each other outside of their writing partnership.
• I just found this book wildly disappointing.

What it Pairs With: Disappointment and a too sweet white wine

Rating: 1.5/5 – I hated the book but technically the writing wasn’t bad.