This Rec League is from longtime commenter, Stefanie! It’s a good one:
Have you done a rec league for those who like what I’ll call The Shop Around the Corner Trope. I can’t think of what else to call it, since it’s not quite enemies to lovers or friends to lovers. Apparently, I really like this trope whether it is played straight, using the plot points from that original movie, which I watch every Christmas, or slightly subverted as in D. L. Soria’s The Cottage Around the Corner, which I just finished for my local romance book club, and which is clearly based on You’ve Got Mail. The title name checks both the shop in You’ve Got Mail and more distantly that original film. Unlike more typical tropes, this one seems harder to search for in book form. Does the community have any ideas?
Sarah: Attachments by Rainbow Rowell for one.
Tara: Rachel Lacey wrote a cute sapphic reinterpretation of You’ve Got Mail called Read Between the Lines.
Sarah: Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson for sure
In The Library of Second Chances by Savannah Carlisle, the characters write notes to one another using a Little Free Library. One is a very small town bookstore owner, and the other is a development consultant so they’re on opposite sides professionally.
It’s an interesting trope because some of the tension rests on the fact that in real face-to-face life the protagonists are often in opposition, while confiding to that same person online under different identities.
Spoiler Alert plays with that trope (Olivia Dade).
Which is the historical where the heroine goes all the way to somewhere and it turns out the hero’s brother has been catfishing her?
It is right in the foyer of my brain and when I figure it out I am going to be SO mad I couldn’t remember.
Amanda: Is it the new Alexandra Vasti? Earl Crush? ( A | BN | K | AB )
Sarah: I KNEW I WOULD BE PISSED OFF AT MYSELF
Alexandra told me all about this book during a podcast recording, which is why I could remember plot not image. FFS Brain.
And the Miss Ran Away with the Rake by Elizabeth Boyle – and Tweet Cute by Emma Lord [book-mention=”tweet-cute”]
Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin is this trope but with a podcaster and a listener/fan.
Shana: I have never heard of The Shop Around the Corner. Can someone interpret for me?
Amanda: Have you watched You’ve Got Mail?
You’ve Got Mail is a retelling of The Shop Around the Corner but in TSATC, the two characters work at the same company, are adversaries, and don’t know that one another are their respective penpals. (if that makes sense.)
You’ve Got Mail, the characters are rival bookstore owners who chat/fall in love on AOL and don’t know their respective identities. So IRL enemies/rivals to lovers who fall in love over an epistolary element while keeping their identities a secret.
Sarah: Yes, in real life they have an adversarial relationship or bad history. Under a pseudonym/screen name, they’re hitting it off like fire.
Shana: Ohhhhh, I see. Thanks!
Courtney Milan’s Hold Me has that kind of plot. The heroine is a secret blogger and the hero is her biggest fan, but in real life they work in academia and dislike one another.
What books would you recommend? We’re dying to know!
Sally Malcolm’s Christmas novella Love Around the Corner is a retelling as well. Mechanic Alfie and bookshop owner Leo are at odds in real life but start chatting online about literature.
Top Secret by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy is a college romance in which two rivals for fraternity President start chatting online about the stress in their lives.
Both highly recommended.
I tend to hate most takes on The Shop Around the Corner (I just have a really hard time with one LI keeping major secrets from another unless I really really buy the rationale) but The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen is my hands-down favorite of this trope. Fantastical world building, eldest daughter syndrome, taciturn cinnamon roll (is that a thing? Maybe Secret Marshmallow?)…and even when the dumb thing happens, you accept it because she’s set it up so well.
(I also tend to look askance at friends-to-lovers, and Bannen made it work for me in her follow up The Undermining of Twyla and Frank – so clearly she knows the way to save a trope.)
I second The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy! Fantastical, slightly spooky, very poignant story of a healing relationship developing between two lonely people. Can’t recommend enough!
I kind of can’t believe no one has mentioned yet The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen. It was my favorite book of 2023, and the first in one of my all-time favorite series.
Our protagonists dislike each other for various “reasons” but both are lonely and searching for connection and write to “A Friend” just to send their feelings out into the universe. Of course the letters are magically delivered to each other. This is a fantasy novel but set in a world that has such similarities to ours that the ordinariness is part of what makes it special. The world building is fabulous, the romance is earned and I recommend it to everyone.
lol… well clearly Omphale beat me to the rec while I was typing my comment!
The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest (FM) has a shy, Black book lover and a neighbor who’s secretly her favorite author. They’ve written to each other and there’s a conflict and a “Can you set me up with someone?” It’s sweet and fun, but as always, check out the content warnings.
It’s not a romance per se (and it’s actually non-fiction) but 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD is my all time favorite epistolary book—it’s correspondence between and American writer and staff at a London bookshop in the post WWII era. I might go re-read it to restore my faith in humanity a bit.
Also, another vote for HART AND MERCY.
The Mistletoe Motive by Chloe Liese is a perfect TSATC retelling!
Seconding the recs for TOP SECRET and MEET ME IN THE MARGINS.
Ali Hazelwood’s LOVE ON THE BRAIN has elements. The FMC is contracted to work with NASA, and clashes with a former rival/schoolmate. They have an online connection through her blog/twitter etc.
Laura Kinsale’s “My Sweet Folly” might qualify. Hero is a soldier, he and heroine correspond during wartime (he’s her husband’s cousin). They’re falling in love via letter, but know they shouldn’t admit it or talk about it, and when he shows up at her estate with her a widow and him full of PTSD, it gets complicated.
Stupid Love by Riley Hart! MM NA IR romance set in Atlanta. Two 20-somethings live in the same apartment building and hate each other, but one writes in to the other’s online advice column and virtual snarking and flirting commences. Neither knows the identity of the other and that’s one reason I think this worked for me, where You’ve Got Mail really didn’t because of the secrets.
This is one of my comfort re-reads and I just want more people to discover this light, joyful mm romance. There’s a lot going on for a low conflict romance and it could have been a big mess of mashed up tropes, but somehow it works.
I love that the hh and their friends feel like real twenty-somethings, with small apartments and budgets and multiple gigs – so refreshing compared to the 23 yo executives running around other romances. I also like the bi rep.
Ooooh, this is a favorite trope of mine, though I don’t have a lot of recs for it, so will definitely be checking out some of these. Here’s a couple though:
This one’s a bit obscure but Sherwood Smith’s CROWN DUEL (technically the second book, COURT DUEL, but the duo is usually sold as one book now under the CROWN DUEL title) has a version of this, where the heroine, struggling to adjust to a court society she doesn’t understand and feels intimidated by, leans on an anonymous pen pal who is (of course) the man she loathes in real life.
Their rivalry is mostly due to a recently-ended revolution to overthrow a corrupt king, in which they were more or less on the same side, but her small and desperate ragtag resistance group kept getting in the way of his much more organized and competent one in ways that left her resentful and humiliated. It’s YA fantasy rather than romance, but the series overall is excellent and super underrated, and the romance/anonymous penpal subplot is very well done.
Also Lisa Kleypas’ LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, in which a somewhat eccentric young woman who has never fit in to polite society ends up writing, under a friend’s name, to a man who once ridiculed her, while he’s away fighting in the Crimean War. Able to get to know each other outside the pressures of society, they end up falling for each other by letter.
This one doesn’t have as much overlap of the IRL rivalry/falling in love via letters stages – most of their antagonism is before the story starts (and is just him being a bit judgy about her eccentricity and her thinking he’s kind of a jerk for it), and then by the time he’s back home, struggling with PTSD and guilt, they’ve stopped writing, but it takes him a while to see beyond his past judgment of her and realize that it was her he was writing to and falling for.
Self rec. 🙂 My novella HUSH begins with a “shop around the corner” homage in that the MCs are both using aliases for an online book chat and don’t realize they actually know each other until they decide to meet in person. It’s a contemporary, low-angst, making-it-work scenario with heroes in their 30s. That’s HUSH by Alexandra Caluen, on all platforms.
I really want someone to do the opposite of this trope. Like co-workers with a crush on each other who are online/fandom enemies.
Thank you so much everybody! These look great, and I’m glad to see the mentions of a few books I’ve been looking to read. Keep them coming!
To Sir, with Love by Lauren Layne
I didn’t realize I liked this trope or that it existed but have read several of these books and ADORED that original movie for decades. I need to add to my trope list! I will hoover up all the other reqs mentioned here.
The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannon is pure SATC trope. It actually lifts scenes from it.
Fun Facts:
All of the movies, and a Broadway play, are adapted from Miklos Laszlo’s play, PARFUMERIE. The movies are *not* considered remakes of each other, though, some have a nod to a previous film.
PARFUMERIE (play in Budapest), 1937
THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, 1940
IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME, 1949
SHE LOVES ME (Broadway play), 1963
YOU’VE GOT MAIL, 1998
LA BOUTIQUE AU COIN DE LA RUE (play in France), 2001
THE PERFUME SHOP (play), 2009
Dear Mr. Brody by AM Johnson. This is a M/M contemporary romance featuring a divorced, bi-curious part-time literary professor and editor, and a one of his students, a 23-year-old vet looking to complete his college degree. The latter is gay but so far has been in the closet. They meet in class, but also anonymously on a gay dating app. It all comes out when they decide to meet in person. They are not enemies when they meet as student and professor first – they are attracted to each other, but nothing happens there. When they finally meet and realise that they have been flirting anonymously, they are both aware that they are in sticky territory. I am not usually into this type of thing (student/teacher), but here it’s handled well and they find a solution in the end. Also, it is a lovely romance!
Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross is a great YA romance that has some of these elements (rivals at a newspaper writing to each other via magical typewriters).
I enjoy this trope and can’t wait to check out some of these recs!
I second Tara’s recommendation of “Read Between The Lines” by Rachel Lacey. It was SO spot-on as a “You’ve Got Mail” retelling. I loved the MCs; Jane is decidedly less cutthroat than Joe, so I found it easier to forgive her when the time came. I was charmed by it enough to read the second book and to put more of Lacey’s books on my reading list, and I still smile when I think about it.
WORST IN SHOW by Anna Collins is an adorable take on the trope—about a family-run pet store vs chain that opens nearby. There’s a super fun dog show element too.
Though more Abbott Elementary than The Shop Next Door, FLIRTY LITTLE SECRET by Jessica Lepe has the online vs real-life relationship element too.
I really love this trope, so I thought I’d read more than I had. I’m going to have to look at all the recs! There’s a Goodreads Listopia called “Two person love triangle” and it includes a book on my TBR: Alex, Approximately by Jenn Bennett. It’s a YA romance. https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/199591.Two_person_love_triangle
There’s another Listopia called Pen Pals Romances which is broader than just this trope, but it includes some of the recs here too.
Just came across a June release by Ali Brady called BATTLE OF THE BOOKSTORES that seems to fit the bill! Rival bookstore owners who bond anonymously online.
I think I said this in the email, but I will mention it here as well. I could have called it the You’ve Got Mail trope, since that’s the most famous version of that story, but since The Shop Around the Corner is my favorite version, that’s the name I went with.
@Denise: I know that none of these are technically remakes, but considering that the films borrow so heavily from each other, it was easy to forget that. I will note that The Shop Around the Corner, In the Good Old Summertime, and You’ve Got Mail are very different in mood/tone in spite of the similarities. Or it seems to be that way to me.
Enthusiastically agreeing with Hart and Mercy as well as To Sir, With Love by Lauren Layne. I also wanted to add a couple of others that I loved that are what I would call “You’ve Got Mail” adjacent in that the MCs start and deepen their relationship without meeting face to face, but they aren’t business or professional rivals.
– The first 2 books in Cara Bastone’s Love Lines series, CALL ME MAYBE, and SWEET TALK have this setup. In Call Me Maybe, a harried app developer whose new website keeps crashing starts talking to a guy on the IT help line and they grow close as he helps her work out all of the bugs in her site. In Sweet Talk, a woman receives a wrong number text from a guy she knows IRL. They start texting all the time, but he doesn’t know who he is texting.
– YOU SPIN ME by Karen Grey is set in 1988 and features an actress doing a long distance commute every day who starts calling in to a radio show and forms a relationship with the late night DJ who was scarred in a childhood accident and doesn’t normally like to meet people in real life.
And if I didn’t say it in the email, I certainly meant to do so.
Again. Thank you so much everyone. If you’ve got more recs please share them.
The Neighbor Favour by Kristina Forest and Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood.
Some YA books are Jen Bennett’s Alex Approximately and Emma Lord Tweet Cute
A couple of classics that are “Shop Around the Corner” adjacent are Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac (which is romantic, but not a romance)/Steve Martin’s Roxanne (which is a romantic comedy) and Jean Webster’s Daddy-Long-Legs. Both have plots where one protagonists (but not other) is in the know, but the person who does the bulk of the letter writing is not the same. In Cyrano/Roxanne, the hero assumes the identity of his inarticulate friend and writes love letters for his friend to the woman they both love. In Daddy-Long-Legs, the heroine is writing letters describing her collegiate experiences to the man who sponsored the scholarship that allows her to attend college. She has never met her sponsor (or so she thinks), so she has no idea that he is not an old fuddy-duddy, but rather a charming younger man, who is beginning to fall for her.
Other books I think of as “Shop Around the Corner” adjacent are Jen DeLucca’s Well Played and Beth O’Leary’s The Flatshare. I’m pretty sure that Jayne Krentz has used this trope at least once in one of her Amanda Quick historicals, but I can’t remember which title.
Kleypas LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON is a great one. The heroine is writing letters to the hero while he’s away at war, pretending they’re from his fiancee, with the fiancee’s agreement, because she can’t be bothered writing. Actually it may be a bit of a Cyrano de Bergerac plot, because the letter writer is not anonymous, but pretending to be another person. Anyway, I love this book to bits. It also has an incredible dog character.
@Karin:
I haven’t seen Cyrano, but I am aware of the basic story. I movie which puts it in a setting which was modern for the time is Love Letters from 1945, in which Joseph Cotten plays a character writes letters for a fellow soldier to send to his girlfriend, played by Jennifer Jones, who of course has no idea that the man writing them and the man sending them aren’t the same. The writer falls in love with the girlfriend, and the girlfriend marries and murders the other soldier and loses her memories of what happened. Meanwhile, Cotten’s character meets a mysterious woman with whom he is beginning to fall in love, but he can’t stop think of the previous lady. It’s worth a watch if you can find it. I didn’t see it on streaming services.
@Steganie Magura, thanks! Murder and amnesia is definitely a twist on the Cyrano plot! I’m going to look for it because I love Joseph Cotten.
DADDY-LONG-LEGS was adapted into film, too, several times.
Film studies in college and too much UHF (and books) as a kid + plus eidetic memory. Not a smart ass, just too much information in my brain and I try to share, thinking it’s helpful. Apologies if I offended anyone–it was meant to be helpful, not snarky.
Late addition to the thread, but I just came across another example! HE LOVES ME NOT, by C.M. Nascosta. A cozy high-heat paranormal (he’s a naga, she’s half-sylvan, living in an inclusive multi-species town). He owns an independent plant store, and she opens a chain florist nearby. Meanwhile they are flirtatious online buddies who meet through a Reddit-type thread about plant problems (I told you it was cozy). Begins with an author’s note about her love of/debt to You’ve Got Mail.
Bringing this post back from the dead…
I just read Valentine novella by Christina Lauren called “The Exception to the Rule” that may fit. It lacked the enemies portion but there is a conflict between the characters that is handled in a responsible, logical manner.
I believe it is only available through Amazon.