The Rom-Commers

Katherine Center is a best-selling author known for her contemporary romance novels. She wrote her first novel in the sixth grade and began publishing her books in 2006, with The Bright Side of Disaster, after nearly a decade of rejections. Two of her books—The Lost Husband and Happiness for Beginners—have been made into movies, and The Rom-Commers is her tenth full novel. Center has been called “the reigning queen of comfort reads” by BookPage, and she refers to her books as “bittersweet comic novels,” often writing stories about heroines who face struggles in their lives but are still able to find happiness (Center, Katherine. “About.” Katherine Center). Center’s novels focus on joy as much as sorrow, and she firmly believes that reading and writing should be fun. She has written an essay and delivered accompanying talks called “Read for Joy,” which focus on this idea and how the stories we read have intrinsic value in our lives.

A common thread throughout her stories—and many romance novels in general—is anticipation, specifically what she calls positively balanced anticipation. According to Center:

Rom-coms don’t give you things to dread […]. They give you things to look forward to.