New Blog Series: If You Like That, Read This!
C’mon. We know that somewhere within your New Year’s Resolution was some lofty goal to read one book a month, or put down the phone and pick up a novel! That’s why we (and by we I mean our AMAZING guest writer Kerry Winfrey) are here to bring you a new series on our blog: If You Like That, Read This!
Kerry is taking fan-favorite rom-coms and sharing books that put up a good (no great) fight! Stay tuned for more - and without further ado we present the first in the series:
If You Like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, read Not the Girl You Marry!
There are few rom-com tropes more beloved than “dating someone for a bet” and “dating someone for a magazine/newspaper story,” and the classic romantic comedy How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days manages to cram them both into one movie.
Kate Hudson plays Andie Anderson, a magazine writer who longs to break out of boring how-to articles and into serious reported pieces. Her boss says she can write whatever she wants if she first writes a “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” piece. Meanwhile, Matthew McConaughey plays Ben Barry, who works in advertising and wants to convince his boss that he can take on a big jewelry account. His boss tells him that if he can make any woman fall in love with him in (you guessed it!) ten days, the job is his. With an iconic performance by Kate Hudson, whose cringe-worthy attempts at relationship sabotage should have nabbed her an Oscar in the (nonexistent) category of “Best Performance of You’re So Vain,” this movie has a place in every romantic comedy lover’s heart.
But there are only so many times you can rewatch the film before you start to memorize it, and what then? Well, lucky for you, I have a book recommendation that couldn’t be more perfect for fans of Andie and Ben’s dysfunctional fake relationship: Not the Girl You Marry by Andie J. Christopher.
Christopher smartly swaps the genders of the main characters: this time, the journalist is played by Jack Nolan, who just wants to cover politics but gets stuck writing one last viral article: How to Lose a Girl. Hannah is an event planner who wants to plan mega-romantic weddings, but her boss thinks she can’t handle it because she’s not in a relationship. And so, just as Jack decides Hannah is the perfect girl to lose, Hannah picks him as the ideal man to date for a couple of weeks…just long enough to convince her boss that she totally understands love.
But, of course, complications (namely, their feelings) ensue. The fun comes from seeing how Christopher subverts the story of the film. This time, it’s a man making all the modern dating “mistakes” we’re so familiar with. Instead of Andie giving Ben a love fern, it’s Jack sending Hannah dick pics in hopes of getting her to dump him. Another much-needed update: Hannah is biracial, which is a great change of pace from the mostly-white homogeneity of 90s and 2000s rom-coms.
This is still a romantic comedy, though, so one thing Not the Girl You Marry has in common with How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is the happily ever after. Hannah is a prickly and vulnerable character who’s afraid to open herself up to real love, but even with his “terrible dude” performance, Jack manages to win her over. But how do they work through their issues (which, of course, include a How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days worthy fight at a big event)? Well, you’ll just have to read the book to find out.