50 pages • 1-hour read
You Deserve Each Other
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Background
Authorial Context: Sarah Hogle
Sarah Hogle is an American author of romantic comedies, both contemporary and paranormal. Her debut novel, You Deserve Each Other, introduces readers to her signature narrative voice and tone that marries humor and emotional depth. Rather than strictly adhering to tropes or established romance genre conventions, Hogle combines elements of romance and comedy, writing books she’d want to read. She never shies away from exploring heightened situations or moments of physical comedy with her characters, as exemplified by the pranks Naomi and Nicholas play on each other in You Deserve Each Other. Scenes like those in which Nicholas drives over Naomi’s self-proclaimed favorite plant or Naomi puts hot sauce in Nicholas’s shaving cream epitomize Hogle’s lighthearted, comedic tone that she anchors with moments of emotional vulnerability and gravitas.
Whether strictly contemporary or paranormal, Hogle’s blend of romance and comedy elements permeates her other books as well. In Twice Shy, Hogle utilizes her signature wit as she explores the effects of anxiety and the stress of stepping out of one’s comfort zone. As in You Deserve Each Other, Twice Shy features a heroine struggling to understand herself and a romance between two people who don’t get along at first but who eventually find that their goals are not so different. In Old Flames and New Fortunes, Hogle applies her emotional storytelling to the fake-dating romance trope as her heroine navigates being thrust back together with the high school sweetheart who broke her heart.
Hogle’s other two novels, The Folklore of Forever and Just Like Magic, incorporate elements of the fantasy genre. The Folklore of Forever features a magical town and an author with writer’s block who searches for inspiration and finds love along the way. Just Like Magic, a holiday romance, follows a heroine who accidentally summons an attractive Christmas spirit and, as the clock ticks down to his disappearance, she must decide if she can love again. As a whole, Hogle’s body of work aims to invoke cozy feelings in small-town settings where love waits for characters brave enough to look for it.
Literary Context: Romantic Comedy
Romantic comedy, a subgenre within the larger romance genre, employs a humorous narrative tone to explore a central love story that drives the plot forward. Hogle’s body of work falls firmly in the romantic comedy subgenre, alongside such popular titles as The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren, The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, and Beach Read by Emily Henry. Romantic comedy books often incorporate witty banter or heightened, humorous situations into common romance tropes such as friends-to-lovers (in which two friends fall in love), enemies-to-lovers (in which enemies realize they love each other), and love triangles (in which one character has two love interests). You Deserve Each Other subverts the enemies-to-lovers trope by featuring an engaged couple who has drifted apart from each other, making the prevailing trope lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers as Nicholas and Naomi rediscover their romance. Hogle also subverts other popular tropes, such as a variation of the forced proximity trope—the one-bed trope, where the couple finds themselves in a situation where they are forced to share a bed. Rather than dropping this surprise on the characters, Naomi and Nicholas have the potential to share a bed throughout the book and find themselves doing so through choices that don’t go as planned, rather than force.
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