Someone Just Like You by Meredith Schorr
What’s it About?
Two childhood rivals are forced to work together to plan their parents’ anniversary party. She thinks he’s a too-charming slacker, and he thinks she’s allergic to fun —there’s no better time to resume their war, and fall in love along the way.
Can opposites really attract? Meredith Schorr’s new enemies-to-lovers rom-com novel, Someone Just Like You (Forever), presents Molly Blum and Jude Stark, two emotionally authentic and strong-willed characters so fixated on tormenting each other that love seems a most unlikely outcome. Enemies ever since a playground recess in first grade where Molly did something to Jude that made him cry, the two have managed to bring out the worst in each other for most of their 27 years.
It’s no surprise to anyone in the Stark or Blum family that Molly and Jude would relish the negative reaction their antics provoke from each other. But what does get called out is that Molly dates people who look just like Jude and Jude dates Molly-look-alikes. There is more going on than Jude and Molly will admit or even realize.
A Childhood Feud Reignites
The novel opens with a Stark/Blum family meeting in Hoboken, New Jersey, where all six siblings — three Starks and three Blums — plan a surprise joint-anniversary party for their parents, to honor the Blums’ 35 years together and the Starks’ 40. Although they live only six blocks apart it’s the first time Molly and Jude have seen each other in over a year. It doesn’t help that a hapless waiter spills part of a too-full cocktail down Molly’s back as she arrives.
But when she and Jude get assigned the task of finding the best Manhattan venue for the party, each accepts the challenge of working together on a project. Both live in Manhattan, this is their only job for the party and they’ve got three months. How hard can it be? Pretty hard, especially as Jude starts to undercut her efforts and her most primal instinct is to undercut him right back.
The truth is that Molly and Jude are anything but strangers. Growing up as neighbors, their mothers were best friends and “it was hard to tell where the Blums ended and the Starks began.” Holidays and traditions were shared, and the two got a front-row seat to each other’s successes and failures. Theirs is an intimacy like family has. Jude has witnessed Molly at her worst and vice versa. No one asks more probing questions of Molly than Jude can. Molly knows better than anyone how much Jude may have disappointed his family with certain of his choices.
Personal Growth and Overcoming Guilt
There are lots of chances for personal growth and change as the story progresses. Both Molly and Jude’s romantic partners are meh. Both Molly and Jude hold jobs that do not seem to suit them. Molly has left her law firm to become a recruiter for other lawyers and Jude is a bartender after his dream of becoming a major league ball player did not pan out.
Molly blames Jude — and he knows it — for one of his pranks that, in her view, ended her Ivy League chances, although she managed to become a lawyer anyway. But she blames herself for ruining Jude’s dream job and Jude has no idea she played a role. For this, she carries “a guilt that is stubborn and unending.” Molly also carries some guilt for her parents’ formerly troubled marriage, in a time that forged her desire to be “the peacemaker — the perfect little girl who morphed into a well-behaved teenager. As long as I colored inside the lines, there would be no unpleasant surprises.”
Schorr writes with an immersive style and energetic pacing that makes for a great summer read. Someone Just Like You does not disappoint, with its fresh Hallmark sensibility, steamy love scenes and a nuanced HEA ending that rings true. It turns out opposites stand to have more in common than they realize. Once they own their attraction, come clean with their true feelings and support each other in their dreams, what seems so opposite isn’t opposite at all.
Publish Date: 7/25/2023
Genre: Fiction, Romance
Author: Meredith Schorr
Page Count: 352 pages
Publisher: Forever
ISBN: 9781538754801
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