all funny, no notes

Caroline Neumann has a dream. She just wants to work in a writer’s room for a successful television show. She and her husband Harry had moved to Los Angeles several years ago so she could find a job out there. He had been a video editor, but he decided to go back to school and train as a therapist. Now he’s building his practice, and Caroline can’t find a way into any writer’s room in town.

Caroline has been writing through it all, but everything she comes up with eventually gets rejected. The spec script for a film called Guardian A-Hole. A treatment for an animated dystopian series that takes place in the ocean. Now, she’s given a chance to adapt a novel into a television show. The only problem is that it’s a romance novel, and she wants to write comedy.

She reads the novel again and figures out a way to adapt it to a comedy series about a special ed teacher who moves to New York and ends up working in a restaurant. But the producers are not too excited about her idea. And then Caroline comes up with an inspired idea about the main character. The teacher came to New York after killing the father of one of her students and burying him under the garden she had set up for her class. The producers love it, and they insist Caroline start working on that angle immediately.

The only problem? It wasn’t Caroline’s idea. She had stumbled on some of her husband’s therapy notes. He was treating a special ed teacher, and that had been a dream she’d had. Caroline using that as part of her pitch is a huge violation of the trust her husband has in her, of the patient’s privacy, and of any ethical consideration. But it’s out of Caroline’s mouth before she can think that part through. And the producers love it.

Caroline moves forward with the story, knowing that there was an excellent chance that the whole series will die in development. But it doesn’t. A star is attached, and then another. More producers come on board. It just keeps moving forward. And that’s when Caroline doubles down on her deception. She meets the teacher in real life and makes friends with her.

The deeper Caroline gets herself in, the worse she feels about herself. Her habit of comparing herself with other writers makes her self-hatred worse, and then her husband suggests she just put all the writing aside and have a baby instead. She’s not sure she’s ready for a baby, and it would take her even further away from the career she’s trying so hard to get to.

As Caroline faces the questions of who she has become and who she wants to be, she realizes that she has some difficult decisions ahead, maybe even more difficult than pulling herself out of Hollywood’s development hell.

Like This, But Funnier is a witty novel about facing the worst in yourself and in the world and coming out the other side. The snark is so sharp, and the writing rings true. Author Hallie Cantor has been in television writer’s rooms, with credits for Inside Amy Schumer and Arrested Development. With this debut novel, Cantor demonstrates her deep understanding of human behavior as well as her willingness to expose us at our worst for the sake of humor and pathos.

I thought Like This, But Funnier was filled with genuine laughs as well as big cringes as she takes on marriage, Hollywood, loneliness, bad choices, and forgiveness in this big-hearted story of failure and success. I got sucked into Caroline’s journey, and I loved it from the first page to the last. I can’t wait to see what Cantor is writing next.

Egalleys for Like This, But Funnier were provided by Simon & Schuster through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.