This Rec League is from longtime commenter, Stefanie! It’s a good one:
Have you done a rec league for those who like what I’ll call The Shop Around the Corner Trope. I can’t think of what else to call it, since it’s not quite enemies to lovers or friends to lovers. Apparently, I really like this trope whether it is played straight, using the plot points from that original movie, which I watch every Christmas, or slightly subverted as in D. L. Soria’s The Cottage Around the Corner, which I just finished for my local romance book club, and which is clearly based on You’ve Got Mail. The title name checks both the shop in You’ve Got Mail and more distantly that original film. Unlike more typical tropes, this one seems harder to search for in book form. Does the community have any ideas?
Sarah: Attachments by Rainbow Rowell for one.
Tara: Rachel Lacey wrote a cute sapphic reinterpretation of You’ve Got Mail called Read Between the Lines.
Sarah: Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson for sure
In The Library of Second Chances by Savannah Carlisle, the characters write notes to one another using a Little Free Library. One is a very small town bookstore owner, and the other is a development consultant so they’re on opposite sides professionally.
It’s an interesting trope because some of the tension rests on the fact that in real face-to-face life the protagonists are often in opposition, while confiding to that same person online under different identities.
Spoiler Alert plays with that trope (Olivia Dade).
Which is the historical where the heroine goes all the way to somewhere and it turns out the hero’s brother has been catfishing her?
It is right in the foyer of my brain and when I figure it out I am going to be SO mad I couldn’t remember.
Amanda: Is it the new Alexandra Vasti? Earl Crush? ( A | BN | K | AB )
Sarah: I KNEW I WOULD BE PISSED OFF AT MYSELF
Alexandra told me all about this book during a podcast recording, which is why I could remember plot not image. FFS Brain.
And the Miss Ran Away with the Rake by Elizabeth Boyle – and Tweet Cute by Emma Lord [book-mention=”tweet-cute”]
Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin is this trope but with a podcaster and a listener/fan.
Shana: I have never heard of The Shop Around the Corner. Can someone interpret for me?
Amanda: Have you watched You’ve Got Mail?
You’ve Got Mail is a retelling of The Shop Around the Corner but in TSATC, the two characters work at the same company, are adversaries, and don’t know that one another are their respective penpals. (if that makes sense.)
You’ve Got Mail, the characters are rival bookstore owners who chat/fall in love on AOL and don’t know their respective identities. So IRL enemies/rivals to lovers who fall in love over an epistolary element while keeping their identities a secret.
Sarah: Yes, in real life they have an adversarial relationship or bad history. Under a pseudonym/screen name, they’re hitting it off like fire.
Shana: Ohhhhh, I see. Thanks!
Courtney Milan’s Hold Me has that kind of plot. The heroine is a secret blogger and the hero is her biggest fan, but in real life they work in academia and dislike one another.
What books would you recommend? We’re dying to know!