By Melissa Barbuzzi
The Roughest Draft follows literary stars Katrina Freeling and Nathan Van Huysen, who on the heels of their greatest success, ended their partnership on bad terms. They haven’t spoken in years—until their agent (who is also Katrina’s fiancé) forces the duo to reunite to write the final book on their contract. The Roughest Draft was marketed as a romance/rom-com, but I would categorize it under the contemporary fiction genre.
The coolest part about this book? It’s a book co-written by two authors (Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka, who are married in real life!) about two authors co-writing a book. I thought this was super cool, and while reading, I always found myself wondering who wrote what.
I’ll start by saying that I enjoyed the general premise of this book: two authors working together, a potential friends to lovers romance, and a new bestselling book on the horizon. However, it ended up being not at all what I expected it to be. I really expected to love this book, thinking it would give me Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation vibes, but sadly it fell short for me. The cover makes it seem like a light and fun rom-com, which is what originally caught my eye, but the book itself is the complete opposite. If I hadn’t gone in with the expectation of something light and fun, I may have enjoyed it more, but unfortunately, I didn’t, so here we are!
Where this book fell short for me was the relationships and chemistry (or lack of). What I expected to be a fun romance turned out to be a book filled with cheating, infidelity, and multiple relationships where I felt no chemistry at all. I think each character cheats on their significant other at least once throughout the book, and at one point, Kat’s fiancé even gives her permission to cheat (what!!). The physical and emotional cheating are really what set this book back for me.
Overall, there was so much potential here, and I was really disappointed to not have loved it as much as I thought I would. Two authors with a flirty past, reunited alone in a house to write their next book together, it’s the perfect rom-com set-up! I generally recommend going into books blind and with no expectations, but in this case, I recommend going into the book with certain expectations. I think if I didn’t go into the book expecting a fast and fun rom-com, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I think this book finally taught me the lesson of “don’t judge a book by its cover” because that’s exactly what I did here!
Thank you, Penguin Random House Canada, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.