Juliet Nolan lives in LA, but she doesn’t much care about Hollywood. Sure, she has her movie star crushes (or crush, Noah Douglas, who has held that place in her heart since middle school), but she doesn’t much care about the industry. That is, until her best friend Shelby needs her to help out at an awards show.

Shelby is an interior designer, but her fiance’s mother supplies seat fillers for all the major awards shows. And her fiance’s mother hates her. So when there’s a major awards show and three of her seat fillers call in, Shelby recruits Juliet to help out. And because Shelby is asking, Juliet says yes. She puts on her rented dress and her pink Converse (she figures she’ll be standing a lot and wants to be comfortable), and puts a candy bar in her purse before heading out.

There are specific rules for the seat fillers—they are not to speak to anyone unless spoken to first and they are not to be on television. The idea is to be as invisible as possible. So when her first assignment turns out to be the seat right next to Noah Douglas (THE Noah Douglas!), it takes all of Juliet’s resolve to stay calm. And then when he gets upset with her, asking if she’s a stalker and telling her to get out of the seat that is not hers, she has to explain that she is merely the seat filler, waiting for his date to get back. And just to bring him back down a peg, she tells him that she doesn’t even know who he is.

Their bickering turns flirtatious, and when he finds her after the ceremony, Juliet refuses to believe Shelby when her friend insists that Noah was looking for her to ask her out. Because Juliet thought the idea was ridiculous, she didn’t say anything encouraging, but Shelby handed him one of Juliet’s business cards, for her mobile dog-grooming business.

And Noah does call. He asks her to come clean up his dog Magnus for a photo shoot, and Juliet and Noah start talking. He asks her out again, and again she turns him down. She doesn’t date—not just movie starts, but anyone, and she has her reasons for that—but they can be friends. Noah agrees, and they spend time together, talking and laughing and getting to know each other.

As Juliet gets more comfortable around Noah, she trusts him more and is finally able to open up about why she won’t date. She explains to him that she gets panic attacks about kissing someone. It had started back in high school, got worse in college, and she finally just accepted that she would be single forever. And she was okay with that. Except that the more time she spends around Noah, the more she wants to get past her panic. She likes him and wants to kiss him. She just doesn’t want to feel like she’s having a heart attack when it happens.

Noah agrees to help her with her panic, and as they practice kissing together, and Juliet slowly overcomes her fears, they develop feelings that are more than just friendship. But is possible for a movie star to have a real relationship with a regular person, or is it all just too complicated?

The Seat Filler is the latest romantic comedy from Sariah Wilson, who also wrote Roommaids and a host of other rom coms. It’s a fun story of friendship and love, and her charming characters make you want to root for them to find their happily ever after after all.

I really enjoyed The Seat Filler. It’s a fun and frothy rom com with great characters. But I did have some problems trying believing some of the things that happened. I had to make the choice to suspend my disbelief for some of these scenes, but I was willing to do it because I liked Juliet so much. I really wanted her to be happy. I was also very happy to read about a character in a romance novel who had a fear of kissing, which is apparently a genuine phobia. Kudos to Wilson for that, and for approaching the topic with kindness and understanding.

Egalleys for The Seat Filler were provided by Montlake through NetGalley, with many thanks.