Gertie Bickerstaff writes happy endings for a living, which becomes a problem when her own runs out of road. Four weeks after her boyfriend Henry announces he feels emotionally apathetic and wheels a pre-packed suitcase out of their tiny Bloomsbury studio, she is wailing in the bath every night, drinking her way through Stanley Tucci’s lockdown cocktail recipes, and staring at a final novel she cannot write. Her Bedlam Creek series is due in seventeen days. Her characters have gone quiet. Then her eccentric neighbour Mrs Casablancas talks her into a rooftop manifestation ceremony, and the next morning River Oakley, the shirtless cowboy villain from Gertie’s own unfinished book, is sitting on her couch asking where the sweet hell he is.
That is the engine of Romantic Hero by Kirsty Greenwood, and it runs on a deliciously simple deal. River wants to go home. Gertie wants Henry back and her novel finished. So they agree to fake a romance hot enough to make the ex jealous, on the theory that magic this strange must have something to do with love.
Gertie, and the Quiet Tragedy of Being a Sidekick
Greenwood writes Gertie in first person, present tense, and the voice is the whole game. Gertie describes herself as a born sidekick. She was her late sister Josie’s devoted shadow, then Henry’s, and she liked it that way. Two, she reasons, is better than one. The cleverest thing the book does is treat that belief as both lovable and a little dangerous. Gertie has folded herself so neatly into other people’s stories that she has misplaced her own. Watching her work out whether she is even allowed to be the lead in her own life gives all the comedy a spine.
River Oakley Refuses to Be a Cardboard Bad Guy
On the page of Gertie’s novels, River is a moustache-twirling obstacle who keeps his half-sister Cassidy off the family ranch. In her living room he is something else: tired, dryly funny, weighed down by promises he made to a dead father. He calls Gertie Owl. He learns about Beyonce. The slow reveal that the villain was never really the villain, just a man flattened by an author who needed an obstacle, is one of the smartest ideas in Romantic Hero by Kirsty Greenwood, and it lets the book ask a sneaky question about how writers treat the people they invent.
Grief Wearing a Stetson
For all the cocktails and cowboy jokes, the real subject here is loss. Josie’s death sits underneath every scene, and Gertie’s repeated, failed attempts to reach her sister’s grave are some of the most honest pages in the book. Greenwood understands that grief and avoidance are roommates, and she lets Gertie be a coward about it for a long time without ever once judging her. When River starts gently coaxing her toward bravery, it never tips into therapy-speak. It feels like one stuck person recognising another, which is a far harder thing to write than a one-liner.
Where It Wobbles: An Honest Critique
No book earns universal love, and this one has a handful of soft spots worth naming plainly:
- The win-back-the-ex engine is a familiar one. The make-him-jealous operation is a tried machine, and readers who have met it before will see most of its gears turning.
- The outcome is rarely in doubt. River’s decency is telegraphed early, so the central choice carries a little less suspense than the blurb’s promised plot twist.
- The middle drifts into montage. A run of bonding set-pieces, shopping trips and a swimming lesson and a karaoke moment, charms without pushing the deadline tension forward.
- The magic keeps its own rules vague. How River arrived and how he might leave stays deliberately hand-wavy, which suits the fairytale tone but may bother readers who like their fantasy logic tightened.
- Some of the comedy is broad. A running gag built on Mrs Casablancas misusing a certain phrase is very funny once and a touch thin by the fourth go.
What Lands, and Lands Well
Set against that, the wins are plentiful, and they are the kind that keep you reading past your bedtime:
- The voice. Gertie is reliably funny, and the jokes do emotional work rather than just decorating the page.
- The supporting cast. Mrs Casablancas, spherical and serene and convinced of her own magic, plus Squish the chihuahua-pug cross, walk off with every scene they enter.
- The chemistry. The slow burn is patient and properly earned, full of near-misses that actually ache.
- The theme. The idea that you can be the romantic lead of your own story rather than the helper in someone else’s gives the froth genuine weight.
The Writing Style, Up Close
Greenwood’s prose is brisk, intimate and stuffed with pop-culture shorthand, from Moonstruck posters to Boyz II Men to Florence Pugh. It reads like a clever friend telling you a story over wine, forever looping back to laugh at herself. If you have read her before, Romantic Hero by Kirsty Greenwood will feel like coming home. If you have not, it makes a very generous front door into her work.
Where It Sits in Greenwood’s Backlist
This one follows The Love of My Afterlife, the Good Morning America book club pick that widened her audience, and it shares that novel’s trick of pinning a high-concept hook to a grieving heart. Longtime readers will recognise the warmth from her earlier comedies Yours Truly, Jessica Beam is a Hot Mess, Big Sexy Love and The Movie Star and Me, along with the novellas It Happened on Christmas Eve and Love Will Save the Day. Among all of them, Romantic Hero by Kirsty Greenwood is one of her warmest and most thematically tidy, a comedy that knows exactly which ache it is treating.
If You Loved This, Read These Next
If the cowboy-stepped-out-of-the-book premise charmed you, line these up:
- The Love of My Afterlife by Kirsty Greenwood, for more high-concept romance built around a tender, grieving centre.
- The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston, in which a ghostwriter of romance collides with the literal supernatural.
- The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston, for magical realism folded neatly into a love story.
- Beach Read by Emily Henry, for a blocked novelist learning to write, and to feel, again.
- By the Book by Jasmine Guillory, a Beauty-and-the-Beast riff about a writer and a difficult man.
- The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary, for cohabiting-strangers comedy with a soft and generous heart.
The Final Word
Who Should Read It
Pick this up if you want a funny, big-hearted summer read that still has something to say. Skip it only if you need your romance plots unpredictable down to the last page or your fantasy systems fully wired.
Romantic Hero by Kirsty Greenwood is a comfort read with more going on beneath the brim of its hat than the premise lets on. It is predictable in the places romance is meant to be predictable, and surprising in the place that counts, which is how much it finds to say about grief, bravery, and giving yourself permission to be the main character. Come for the shirtless cowboy. Stay for the woman learning to write her own happy ending.
