Not Like the Movies

by Kerry Winfrey

July 7, 2020 · Berkley

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Content warning: The heroine’s father has Alzheimers and her caretaking and grief over this are a big part of the plot. Also, there’s a bit of a dysfunctional family (absent mother, charming but useless brother).

Not Like The Movies is an odd book to review. It’s a RomCom set against the backdrop of a lot of pain and grief and insecurity, and I found it fairly depressing to read, perhaps because aspects of Chloe’s personality hit a little too close to home.

Chloe may be all good cheer, yacht rock, and funky vintage clothing on the outside, but her life is not easy. Her mother abandoned the family when she was ten, her father didn’t cope, and her twin brother is charmingly irresponsible, so she basically became the grown-up in the house from that point onward. Then, just as she reached adulthood, her father got Alzheimers, her twin left town, and Chloe was left alone to juggle work, studying, and caring for her father. Meanwhile, her best friend, Annie, has fallen in love with a movie star and launched her screenwriting career with a RomCom that is based on Chloe’s life, with her boss as the romantic lead. The similarities between script and reality are strong enough that people keep asking Chloe if she is ‘Coffee Girl’, and if she and Nick are really dating. And then Chloe’s brother Milo blows back into town, supposedly to reconnect with her and help with their father, but instead adding another level of stress to her life. Oh, and Chloe is also helping Annie plan her wedding. It’s a LOT, and I felt exhausted just reading about it.

Chloe is the sort of person who has to do everything herself, because she has never been able to rely on anyone else, and also because deep down, she believes that people will only care for her if she does things for them. And she is a mass of guilt and stress over all the things that she thinks she ought to be doing but isn’t able to do, like care for her father at home, or keep up with her studies. Even though her father lives in the best facility that she can afford, and one of employees there is a close friend of hers, she still has them call her every time he has any sort of episode or difficulty (such as getting annoyed because he thinks the man across the hall has been fiddling with his TV), and she invariably treats this as a three alarm fire – whatever she is doing, she stops at once so that she can go in and settle him. She never, ever spends so much as a night away from home, just in case something happens, and she is always on call. (Her friend does point, gently, that he is in the facility for a reason and that they can look after him… but Chloe’s conscience won’t allow anyone else to take responsibility for her father’s emotional wellbeing.)

Her insecurity about others also means that even though Chloe really, really HATES the fact that Annie made her life into a movie (and worse, into a RomCom, when her actual life feels so bleak), she can’t bring herself to say anything about this to Annie, because she doesn’t want to be a bad friend. Indeed, not only is she helping with the wedding planning, but she keeps on volunteering to do more and more extra things – making the desserts, creating a pom wall, and so forth. To give her credit, Annie does keep on saying, no, these things are not necessary, you do not have to do them, and really only lets Chloe do them because her heart is clearly set on it, but oh boy.

I really can’t stress enough how stressful and exhausting it was to be inside Chloe’s head.

By contrast, we don’t get to see the inside of Nick’s head at all, though it’s clear from pretty early on that Chloe’s curmudgeonly boss has a soft spot for her the size of a small planet. They bicker and banter over music, baking, and how the coffee shop should be run (Nick owns it, but Chloe is his only full-time employee), but when Chloe gets a call from her father’s facility, Nick always, always lets her drop everything and go to him, even if it means leaving the incompetent Tobin to close up the shop. Chloe sees him as a ‘hot dad’ or ‘sexy grandpa’ type (and I really, really wish she didn’t, because she managed to introduce a weird sort of age difference squick to this relationship that did not have to be there), even though he’s only two years older than she is – he’s responsible, organised, likes depressing indie music, and is resistant to change.

Nick sighs. “You know how you’re always on my case to freshen things up here? Be more adventurous with what we offer?”

I nod. “Yes, stop being such a boring old man. I do say that often.”

“I’m only two years older than you.”

“Biologically. Spiritually, you’re an elder.”

“Maybe I should rescind this invitation.”

I wave him on. “Keep talking.”

“Since you have some, well… good ideas about how we could change things up, I thought maybe you could come too. See if there are any new roasters we should try in the shop.

I close my eyes.

“What… are you doing?” Nick asks.

“I’m soaking in this moment. The moment when you finally admitted that my ideas are good.”

“I said some of your ideas are good.”

“I believe your exact words were, ‘Chloe, you’re a goddess and a genius and everything you say is golden. I should always listen to every single idea you have.’”

“You’re ridiculous,” he says, but I can hear him smiling as he says it. I open my eyes and feel a jolt when I see him staring at me, his brown eyes looking right into mine with unnerving intensity.

It’s clear from the start that the café is one of the few places where Chloe can relax and have fun, and that Nick is a big part of that. He is the caring, reliable person that Chloe doesn’t believe she has in her life, and I wonder if that’s why she is so determined to convince herself that he is a father figure rather than a love interest. She doesn’t have a lot of other sources of security in her life.

I have to say, though, this leads to Chloe treating Nick rather unfairly for much of the book, which was frustrating to me. Nick is endlessly kind and patient, and there is a point at which Chloe starts to really take advantage of that, and doesn’t take it well when he pushes back. In Chloe’s defense, she has a LOT on her plate, she’s not the most self-aware character I’ve met, and Nick isn’t exactly Mr Communicative when it comes to his feelings. It’s perhaps not surprising that she keeps failing to notice that he is very obviously in love with her. Don’t get me wrong; I do think the relationship they reach in the end is a very sweet one, and good for both of them, but the process of getting there is fairly painful. It was so clear that Chloe was hurting Nick deeply and not noticing, and at the same time, Chloe was so full of hurt and stress herself that it was absolutely wonderful when Nick kept being there for her time after time – and devastating when he reached his limit and said he couldn’t keep doing this.

Other things that were fun…well, the coffee shop generally. And the food! By now, I am sure you are well aware of how I feel about food in books…or out of books. Chloe loves baking, and her pies are described in loving detail, and Nick makes a mean chicken soup when Chloe has a cold. (Incidentally…it seems ridiculous to have a content warning for colds, but it is also DEEPLY STRANGE to be reading a book where someone is sick with a respiratory infection and multiple people come to visit and hang around in the house to help out. I was all No! Don’t do it! Drop the food on the doorstep, and ring to chat! STAY OUT OF THE INFECTION ZONE AND IN FACT JUST STOP RIGHT THERE WHILE I SANITISE MY E-READER.) Anyway, point being, this is the sort of book that makes me want to open a bakery, despite the horrendous hours involved.

I also liked the various minor characters in the book, from the coffee shop regulars, to Chloe’s brother’s new boyfriend, Fred (who is certainly a keeper), to Nick’s supremely daggy but lovely group of friends. And the banter between Chloe and Nick was really first class. It’s not everyone who will happily play straight man to your one-woman comedy routine.

Here they are, after Chloe gets Nick to try one of her pies.

“Tell me it’s good,” I say, too loudly, trying to stop my train of thought.

“It’s good,” he says.

“I would have accepted a little more enthusiasm, but okay.”

Nick takes another bite, and then another. I watch him chew as I bite my bottom lip.

He stops chewing. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m not looking at you in any particular way,” I say lightly, but let’s be real, I know that I am. I’m giving Nick intense I’m going to rip your clothes off vibes right now and even though he’s under the spell of an amazing pie, he’d have to be a fool not to notice.

“So that’s all you have to say, huh? Not, like, ‘Wow, this is the literal best pie I’ve ever had and I’m now ruined for other pies’?”

Nick puts down his fork. “Stop needling me.”

“That’s not what you said last night,” I mutter, waggling my eyebrows in an exaggerated manner.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Nick says with an eye roll. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about. It didn’t happen, right?”

We stare at each other a moment, the air heavy, until I say, “Whatever. I’m out of here.”

“Yes, please. Get out of here and go do the job I pay you for.”

“You mean you don’t pay me to stand around and make inaccurate sexual innuendo?”

Nick leans back in his chair, and I have to stop myself from having a physical reaction to the sight of his chest straining against the fabric of his flannel shirt. “Chloe. I don’t even have enough money to pay you for that.”

“I have been working overtime in that regard,” I say, then flee the room.

I loved Chloe’s relationship with Tracey, her ex, who works at her father’s facility, and is now happily married to another woman. The fact that Chloe is casually and openly bisexual, is friends with her ex, and also has sexual relationships with people who aren’t the hero

…was a nice change from the norm. Chloe also has absolutely no interest in marriage or children, and indeed, at the end of the story:

This is another one of those odd books that is a romance but doesn’t entirely feel like one, which is partly due to the fact that the entire book is told from Chloe’s point of view, but also due to the fact that a lot of the book is Chloe sorting out her relationships with Annie and her brother, coming to terms with her father’s illness, and letting herself stop needing to do everything for everyone – and these other relationships and issues struck me as being as central to the story as the romance. One of most climactic scenes in the book was Chloe finally having the argument that she needed to have with Annie over her using Chloe’s story as the basis for her film, which honestly was a shitty thing to do, especially if you are going to do such a poor job of renaming the characters (Zoe and Rick for Chloe and Nick? Really?) that complete strangers and also journalists can easily track down the originals.

So where does that leave me with this story? It’s really hard to say.

I loved the food porn because I always love the food porn (and speaking of more literal food porn – the chocolate dipped banana-and-strawberry-on-a-stick penises for the Hens’ night were genius), and the banter and humour were delightful. Tracey was fantastic, Nick was great, and even Annie came good in the end. I loved the bi representation too. And Chloe…I had so much sympathy for Chloe that this book hurt to read.

I don’t know what to do with that. It’s a really sweet story, and Chloe does get the happy after she deserved, but I got so depressed along the way, because the stress and the need to do everything for everyone (and the fear that if I don’t, nobody will like me anymore) felt very real and very familiar and I seriously considered having a mid-life crisis on the spot. So for me, it wasn’t an enjoyable reading experience, because it was tailor-made to target some of my very best neuroses, but for a different reader, I think it could be really affirming and lovely. (On another positive note, I now know what yacht rock is, and I’m pretty sure I can annoy my husband FOREVER with this.) (I just asked him if he knew what yacht rock was, and he gave me the most SUSPICIOUS look, as though he thought I was about to burst into obnoxious song. Which, admittedly, I am more than capable of doing, but I don’t happen to know any yacht rock songs, so he’s safe for the time being.)

Ed. note: Please call on me. I can help you with this task.

I think if I were a different reader, this book would hover somewhere between an A minus and a B plus. There is some lovely humour and food-is-love sort of food porn (the best kind in my view), and I really liked the unconventional characters, who reminded me of the eccentric and unconventional people in my own life. It’s quite a grounded romance, actually – with the exception of Annie and her fiancé, nobody in this book has a particularly glamorous job or a lot of money, and so the fantasy we are reading here is not the one of the hero who rides in and makes all your problems magically vanish, but rather the one of the hero who will stay with you through the shitty things, and the shitty things will stink a bit less because he is there. On reflection, that’s a pretty nice fantasy.

But for me, it was such emotionally hard going that I can’t imagine reading it again. It’s very, very hard to be objective about this book, but I do think it needed a bit more time spent in the happy ever after given how bleak things got for Chloe in the last quarter of the story. I like to finish a romance novel with a smile on my face, not with a vicarious stress hangover. My reading experience started well, but swooped down to a D in the later chapters.

I think I’m going to land on a B minus. Not Like The Movies does some things very well, but it was very much not the book for me. If, like me, you are the sort of person who is prone to being stressed out and pulled in too many directions and inclined to take on the problems of anyone around you, I suggest you give this one a miss. But if you have better boundaries than I do, and are up for a book that tackles dementia and difficult family dynamics, but also treats you to clever banter, unconventional but kind characters, and lavish descriptions of pie, then I think you will enjoy this one.