The Husbands
On The Idea of You, author backlists and getting stuck in the middle
The long anticipated adaptation of The Idea of You finally dropped on Amazon Prime this weekend. The Idea of You being the book by Robinne Lee about Solene, a 39-year-old mother and divorcee who falls for Hayes Campbell, a 20-year-old boy band pop star that I devoured in quarantine and think about… all the time.
The movie is not the book! For one, they changed the ages of Hayes Campbell and Solene’s daughter to make the story more palatable, which is fair.
I have other gripes though — they gloss over too much of their relationship in montage so you don’t totally feel the connection they have the way you do in the book. Also, they diverted from the book’s ending, which I famously love even though it wrecked me. The movie almost does the right thing and then… can’t leave it alone.
BUT! It’s an enjoyable movie on its own. It’s fun, it’s glossy, I had a great time.
Anne Hathaway is ten years older than me and she looks so good, it’s humbling.
I have been known to become obsessed with music by fictional bands (bradley cooper made it into my spotify wrapped in 2019; i never not have the daisy jones and the six album in rotation), but mercifully, I think I’m safe from the movie’s boy band, August Moon. They only have four songs and they’re not interesting enough to tempt me (i am also still stuck on tortured poets so… who knows).
No one asked, but this is the only Met Gala look that matters to me because he’s giving Dorian Gray (complimentary)—
What I’m Reading
You’re probably sick of hearing about it, but I finally finished…
The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle - On Sabrina’s 30th birthday, she arrives at a restaurant for dinner with her best friend and finds her estranged father, her former college professor, her ex boyfriend and Audrey Hepburn waiting for her at their table. The book plays out in two timelines — a minute to minute account of the dinner and the arc of Sabrina’s relationship with her ex.
This isn’t Rebecca Serle’s first book, but it’s her first adult book (she wrote 5 young adult novels before she made the switch). It’s always interesting for me when I go back to the first book by an author I’ve followed for a while and can see the themes they’ll continue exploring throughout their career. Like her other books, this one is largely about grief and fate.
The Husbands by Holly Gramazio - Lauren comes home one night from her best friend’s hen do (bachelorette party for those that don’t speak british) to find that she has a husband. The problem is, she’s not married and she doesn’t know him. The next day, the husband goes into the attic to fix the light bulb and down comes a new husband. And it happens again and again, the attic seemingly producing an unlimited supply of new husbands!
I’m a little more than halfway through, and every time it starts to feel repetitive, there’s a new little twist, which has been fun! I am very curious to see how it all plays out.
If Lauren, theoretically, has an unlimited supply of men to try on, how does she know when she’s done? How does she know when she’s found the best one?
So far, in Lauren’s experience (and mine), sure, the quantity is there, but the quality… not so much.
What I’m Writing
I’m stuck in the beginning of the middle. The drama of the novel starts to escalate when my main character goes to Palm Springs for a work trip and runs into an ex. I want the balance of tension and back story and stakes and motivations to be perfect, which is… difficult to achieve, and I am afraid… so I’m moving at a glacial pace and it does not thrill me!
I was scrolling through my photos the other day and found a picture of this quote from Talking at Night —
He looks at what he can see of her face, her hair grazing her cheekbones. He wants to tell her that love and fury so often feel the same, to him. That his skin burns for her. His blood crawls, and that doesn’t feel safe or nice or quiet; it feels like rage.
It’s not exactly what is between my characters but it’s in the same ballpark. I’m working out how to reconcile what my character knows, what she’s learned from the past, with what she wants in the present. Basically, I’m trying to remember what it’s like to do something against my better judgement, not caring how it will effect me later...
A snippet of a scene I’ve cut from Novel 2 and pasted into a note called “use somewhere”—
I feign thoughtfulness, when really my mind is blank. It’s empty. There is nothing interesting about me. Nothing worth sharing. Nothing he couldn’t find on Instagram. Wait. I almost spit out my tea in excitement instead of swallowing – a feat I managed to accomplish last night. “I say 10 to 20 Hail Marys every time I’m on a plane that’s about to take off.”
“Hail Marys? What are you, Catholic?”
That’s all from me this week— Stay Tuned!