Hate Notes

Keeland and Ward double team on this sweet, funny contemporary that begins with a couple of unhappily ever afters. Unemployed 20-something Charlotte Darling, strapped for cash, decides to sell her unused wedding gown. But at the consignment shop, she swaps it for another, unable to resist the other dress’s feathers or the romantic note stitched into its lining. The man whose name is embossed on the note’s blue paper is Manhattan real estate broker Reed Eastland, and Charlotte claims to be a wealthy dog surfing instructor so he’ll show her a $12 million Upper West Side apartment. Reed is super sexy, but when he discovers Charlotte’s a phony, he’s scathing. Sobbing in a public restroom, Charlotte is comforted by a sympathetic stranger who offers her a job. In a stroke of deus ex machina, the stranger is Reed’s grandmother, and the job is being his personal assistant. The subsequent push-pull of their professional relationship and deep attraction is alternately woebegone and sunny, making for excellent escapist fodder. Agent: Kimberly Brower, Brower Literary & Management. (Nov.)