Ellie Jenkins has a great life. She works on as a writer on a hit television show about high school. She’s a talented writer but she struggles with her scripts sometimes. The truth is, Ellie hated high school, so she has trouble reaching for the emotions that the showrunner wants these characters to experience. So when the writers’ assistant finds the invitation to her high school ten-year reunion in her trash can, the showrunner sees an opportunity for her.
He makes her an offer. If she goes back to Ohio for her reunion weekend, then he will promote her to co-Executive Producer, which is a big step toward running a show for herself. It’s what she’s been working so hard for, and all she has to do is go back to high school and complete a list of ten things. She is a smart, hard-working adult, and she deserves this promotion. Ellie agrees and packs her back to go home.
The list that her two best L.A. friends came up with feature the superlatives of high school. so she’ll have better hair than Best Hair and out-spirit the Most Spirited. She’ll have to grab a beer with Best All-Around, hook up with the Prom King, create a piece of art with Most Artistic, and she’ll have to enlist the help of her high school crush to help her. If she can cross all ten things off her list, then she gets the dream job.
Ellie gets back home and heads to the local grocery store to pick up fresh pastries to snack on, and that’s where she runs into him. Her high school crush, Mark Wright, is working in the bakery, and she is immediately transported back to her insecure high school self. He’s happy to see her, but she’s shocked to see him working at the local grocery store. He had been heading to medical school last she knew, even though she knew he really wanted to go to film school.
Later, she heads to the local bar to see who is still in town and who came back for the reunion. She needs to hunt down all those who are on her list, so she can complete her list and get back to California. But at the bar, she runs into her ex-best friend Roxy as well as Mark, bringing back all the feelings she’d been avoiding for ten years.
But as she reconnects with her former classmates, trying to complete the tasks on her list and dealing with her new crush on Mark, Ellie starts to realize that maybe she hated high school so much because of her actions and not anyone else’s. And as she finds herself experiencing all the things she had missed out on all those years ago, Ellie finds herself drinking and pranking and cheering the basketball team and making out with the guy she had been crushing on.
But when the reunion is over and the list is complete, Ellie has to decide to live out her fantasy life in Ohio with the crush (who is quickly becoming more serious) or go back to L.A. and the life she’s been building all those years. Will she chose the chance of love, or will she go back to her avoidant ways?
Ellie Is Cool Now is a rom com with a fun premise, having to go back and finally have those high school experiences you missed out on the first time in order to get the dream job. But there are also some deeper themes that come up, like fidelity and sobriety and sisterhood. It’s great to see Ellie grow through her experiences and to find a maturity that she had missed out on before. And as a Midwesterner myself, I loved seeing Ellie getting so excited about fall, because it is such an amazing time in this part of the country.
I really enjoyed Ellie Is Cool Now. I thought authors Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren did a good job putting this story together and coming with up interesting hoops for Ellie to jump through. I will admit that it’s not the most sophisticated romance I’ve read, but if you’re looking to read some fluffy high school reunion shenanigans, then it’s a fun story to hang out with for a while.
Egalleys for Ellie Is Cool Now were provided by Forever through NetGalley, with many thanks.
