Finding Mr. Write

Mystery writer Armstrong (The Boy Who Cried Bear) turns to romance with this sharply funny satire. Aspiring author Daphne McFadden is tired of agents rejecting her zombie romance novel and decides to try something radical. She goes back on submission using the male alter ego Zane Remington and calling the book a fantasy (though she doesn’t actually remove any of the romance). The ruse works, landing her a $500,000 book deal. Daphne’s lawyer friend, Nia Paramar, helps her maintain the deception by roping in Chris Stanton, Nia’s accountant, to play Zane in Daphne’s author photo. For a video shoot, Chris travels from Vancouver to Daphne’s home in the Yukon, where he portrays Zane as macho and arrogant, though Daphne gets glimpses of the sweet, nerdy man underneath. The novel becomes a runaway hit, and Daphne and Chris’s mutual attraction ignites on a book tour where Daphne poses as Chris’s assistant. But they must face the fallout together when Daphne’s creepy neighbor threatens to reveal their deception. Armstrong packs in plenty of laugh-out-loud moments while driving home her point about gendered expectations and inequities in genre publishing. Add in believable chemistry between the leads, and the result is sure to please fans of meta rom-coms. Agent: Lucienne Diver, Knight Agency. (June)