I have been collecting the Simon Pulse Romantic Comedies over the past year or so and I'm happy to say I've finally picked up one an read it and I sure started with a great one!

The premise of A Novel Idea sounds promising a shy bookish girl starts a book club at a local bookstore/coffee shop to bulk up her college resume and hopes to find a cute boy in the process. And holy cow the book did not disappoint. It was as sweet, bookish, and nerdy as I hoped it would be!

Norah was very easy to relate to, she's well read (with a secret love of romance novels) and has two outgoing and fun best friends Audre and Scott. And of course her wish comes true of a sweet and nerdy book boy in her book club in the form of James. James is the ultimate nerdy cute boy, I would totally go for that. I thought their semi-relationship was sweet and how they were both too shy to really do anything until Norah hatches a plan with the help of one of her romance novels... hilarity ensues!

As promised the book is funny and romantic and I can't wait to read more from this series! ( )

Junior bookworm Norah Bloom is short on extracurriculars for her college resume, so she decides to start a book club. A group of arbitrary people arrive at the café the Book Nook the first day: Audre, Norah’s cooking-loving best friend; Scott, the gay friend; Francesca, a hot senior whose popular-girl attitude doesn’t seem to fit with why she joined the book club; Neil, mistaking the club for a sci-fi group; and James, Neil’s best friend.

Norah immediately feels a connection with the book-loving James as they converse easily. But due to her lack of experience with members of the opposite sex, Norah resorts to copying the male-snagging methods of a protagonist from a trashy romance novel, her guilty pleasure. This plan involves her writing herself a love note and letting James see it, sending herself flowers, and so on.

However, Norah soon realizes that this is real life, not a perfect fictional world, and that many things can go wrong with her plan—and go wrong they do. How many more interesting secrets will she find out about her book club members before she can finally snag James…if she can get him?

A NOVEL IDEA is 10% books and 90% typical high school awkward love. Don’t read this looking for some insightful views on books and reading, but if you’re in need of a quick, cute read about high school crushes, this book is good for you. ( )

Norah, in danger of not having enough extracurriculars for her college applications, decides to create and host a book discussion group at her local indie bookstore. It is at the first meeting of her newly formed bookgroup that she meets James Roth, the boy with beautiful blue eyes, tousled dark hair, and nice broad shoulders, that she starts majorly crushing on. It’s now up to Norah to figure out how to snag James and what better way than to steal scenes straight from the latest Irene O’Dell romance novel? But, will her idea work or will she totally blow any chance she had with James?

Most romance novels get on my nerves, but this is one of the few “sappy” love stories that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was a page turner just waiting to see what stunt Norah would try to pull of next and whether it would work its intended purpose. It was a light read with lots of sarcastic humor and tons of pop culture references that added a hip factor to the book. Another thing I liked was all the literature mentioned throughout the novel –- Weetzie Bat, Sense and Sensibility, Boy meets Boy, Eragon, The Devil Wears Prada to mention just a few. This is a true romance through and through, meeting the two criteria of a central love story and an optimistic ending. ( )

Decent, light, airy read. Fairly predictable. ( )