What Nora Knew

Linda Yellin

2014 • 304 pages

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"Molly Hallberg is a thirty-nine-year-old divorced writer living in New York City who wants her own column, a Wikipedia entry, and to never end up in her family's Long Island upholstery business. For the past four years Molly's been on staff for an online magazine, covering all the wacky assignments. She's snuck vibrators through security scanners, speed-dated undercover, danced with the Rockettes, and posed nude for a Soho art studio. Fearless in everything except love, Molly is now dating a forty-four-year-old chiropractor. He's comfortable, but safe. When Molly is assigned to write a piece about New York City romance 'in the style of Nora Ephron, ' she flunks out big-time. She can't recognize romance. And she can't recognize the one man who can go one-on-one with her, the one man who gets her. But with wit, charm, whip-smart humor, and Nora Ephron's romantic comedies, Molly learns to open her heart and suppress her cynicism in this bright, achingly funny novel."--Page 4 of cover.

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Susan Scribner

What Nora Knew is an entertaining homage to Nora Ephron's rom-com movies, complete with The Dull but Well-Meaning Wrong Guy, The Obvious (to everyone but the heroine) Right Guy, the Big Misunderstanding, and the Grand Gesture. It garners a few chuckles but won't linger long in the memory.

Author Linda Yellin is a very funny woman. That doesn't mean she is a great writer. Her scenes contain plenty of witty dialogue and wacky predicaments, but they don't always do much to propel the story forward. And her characterizations don't have a whole lot of depth, although I appreciate the fact that her heroine is a gutsy, talented writer instead of a ditzy Meg Ryan clone.

Although I thought it was cute, the book frustrated me, much like Sleepless in Seattle, because the heroine and Mr. Right don't get much of a chance to have a real relationship. I never understood why people find Sleepless to be such a great romance, when Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan don't even meet until the very end. To me a real love story shows the hero and heroine overcoming obstacles to reach a HEA, and this book's heroine has another boyfriend for almost three-quarters of the novel, so that obviously can't happen. The journey is primarily about the heroine deciding that she deserves something better than a passionless relationship, and one is left to wonder if the relationship with Mr. Right will have any staying power. But that's putting too great an expectation on a Hollywood rom-com, or on this book.