The Book:
As Seen On TV by Meredith Schorr
Published June 7, 2022 by Forever
Date read: August 26, 2022
The Characters:
Adina and Finn
Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon
The Plot (from Goodreads):
Emerging journalist Adina Gellar is done with dating in New York City. If she’s learned anything from made-for-TV romance movies, it’s that she’ll find love in a small town—the kind with harvest festivals, delightful but quirky characters, and scores of delectable single dudes. So when a big-city real estate magnate targets tiny Pleasant Hollow for development, Adi knows she’s found the perfect story—one that will earn her a position at a coveted online magazine, so she can finally start adulting for real . . . and maybe even find her dream man in the process.
Only Pleasant Hollow isn’t exactly “pleasant.” There’s no charming bakery, no quaint seasonal festivals, and the residents are more ambivalent than welcoming. The only upside is Finn Adams, who’s more mouthwatering than the homemade cherry pie Adi can’t seem to find—even if he does work for the company she’d hoped to bring down. Suddenly Adi has to wonder if maybe TV got it all wrong after all. But will following her heart mean losing her chance to break into the big time?
The Review:
$1500/month rent with all those perks near Newburgh but not in Newburgh? Sign me up! I live in the woods about half an hour from there and my rent is NOT that low. And the cheapest I could find was in Newburgh for $1600 but looked like a crack den. I found it very hard to believe that the nail salon building would have been so cheap when apartments start at $2200 around here.
Now that I’m done nitpicking the locality (okay one more, why doesn’t Finn ever take Adi to Newburgh or the much nicer Beacon to give her a day of the small-town experience? He has a car. Take the girl to a farmer’s market, for Pete’s sake, they really are everywhere up here)…NOW that I’m done, on to my thoughts about the story itself.
Adina rubbed me the wrong way from the start. I don’t like a woman that thinks she needs a man to be happy. She can’t REALLY believe every small town is like the movies, can she? And that she has to “fix” the town by making it more like Gilmore Girls? Ugh, go home. Her article was so condescending, and I’m shocked Finn didn’t tell her that. I’m glad the editor said it, at least! No wonder the Pleasant Hollow residents hated her. She was just creating problems left and right for her own amusement, when the Pleasant Hollow residents clearly didn’t have an issue with the new apartment complex.
She never really grew on me. Once she realized she shouldn’t try to change the town, she moved on to trying to change Finn and his relationship with his father. Whining about Finn not introducing her to his father as his girlfriend, when Finn clearly had other things on his plate? Grow up! She never really seemed to learn or grow throughout the story.
Finn didn’t treat Adina all that well either, but at least he was honest at the beginning about not wanting a serious hookup. They should’ve enjoyed each other for the time she was in town and then gone their separate ways.
The whole story felt very young and immature. I think I’ve established that I just don’t like New Adult, but I didn’t see anything labeling this as such.
Finally, what are the odds of finding one specific person’s dating profile in NYC…twice? Also Kate found it on Hinge but Adina saw it on OKCupid.
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