None of This Was Real
Women’s Fiction / Literary Romance
86,000 words
Tropes & Themes
Canadian Setting
Welcome to the Quebec Laurentian mountains, where wealthy Montrealers have country homes for swimming and boating in the summer and skiing in the winter. Enjoy a poutine by the roadside Casse-Croûte and watch the fireworks for Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day
Coming of age
This dual timeline novel takes us to what is what like being a teenage girl in the early 2010s, as well as being in the mess of your late twenties.
Classic romance tropes
Second chance
Forced proximity
He falls first,
Right person (?), wrong time
Comps
Adelaide by Genevieve Wheeler
Both novels explore a turbulent relationship with an emotional writing style.
Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings
This is a story of not being able to get over your first love, no matter how toxic the relationship may be.
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
This manuscript has a similar setting and tropes. Both novels take place on a lake and explore a second chance romance told in two timelines.
Excerpt
“Guess who I saw last night at a bodega?” Cassie asked me as soon as our fruity holiday drinks arrived at our table.
“Who?” I said. “Logan?”
“No, Brett.”
I nearly spat out my drink, but I swallowed the gin burning the back of my throat. I was seventeen again and happily suffocating in my family’s lake house. Back then, I was enamored by the smell of pine trees, lake water, and cigarettes in a dive bar parking lot. Summers were like a warm pitcher of beer, a crisp can of Pepsi, and tobacco-tainted kisses.
Now I was twenty-eight, in a stuffy bar and it was winter outside.
While staying at her family lake house for her sister's wedding, Jasper revisits her unhealthy teenage summer romance. Will wounds from 10 years ago finally heal, or will they reopen? Jasper's vicious when she gets hurt, and her ex's secrets just might lead to the wedding being ruined.
#wippit #wf
