I’m not sure what I thought of Stein’s When Grumpy Met Sunshine, except what I thought depended on what part of the romance novel I was reading. Stein’s romance fell into three not-well-meshed parts: an initial and lengthy slow-burn getting-to-know-you romance between retired footballer grump Alfie Harding and sunny ghostwriter Mabel Willicker, a shorter sequence of explicit love scenes when the burn fires up and vrooms away, and a dangling chapter dedicated to the HEA. This is how I experienced the novel as a reader, disjointed, but the blurb will give you the overall picture: 

When grumpy ex-footballer Alfie Harding gets badgered into selling his memoirs, he knows he’s never going to be able to write them. He hates revealing a single thing about himself, is allergic to most emotions, and can’t imagine doing a good job of putting pen to paper.

And so in walks curvy, cheery, cute as heck ghostwriter Mabel Willicker, who knows just how to sunshine and sass her way into getting every little detail out of Alfie. They banter and bicker their way to writing his life story, both of them sure they’ll never be anything other than at odds.

But after their business arrangement is mistaken for a budding romance, the pair have to pretend to be an item for a public who’s ravenous for more of this Cinderella story. Or at least, it feels like it’s pretend—until each slow burn step in their fake relationship sparks a heat neither can control. Now they just have to decide: is this sizzling chemistry just for show? Or something so real it might just give them their fairytale ending? 

I loved every second of Alfie and Mabel’s fake courtship with real feelings. Stein is a great comic writer, so I laughed a lot, but I was also touched, at times heartbroken, especially for blunt, crabby Alfie. The romance began with an emphasis on Mabel and her sunny-sad life of plain, over-weight woman without a boyfriend, uncertain career, and novelist’s side-lined ambitions. Nevertheless, Mabel is irrepressibly energetic, relentlessly cheerful, and resilient. Mabel has bounce back. But the narrative soon gives over to Alfie, broody and vulnerable in surprising ways. This initial first good chunk of Stein’s novel is masterfully balanced between guffaw-worthy humour and building her loveable characters, to the reader and each other.

Mabel and Alfie are brought together by his publisher and her agent. Their meet-cute hilariously sets up Stein’s humour and trope in one Alfie comment: ” ‘…you think I’m a big hairy manimal who’s never gonna be able to work well with this here human cupcake,’ he said. Then just for good measure, he flung a finger in her general direction.” Said human cupcake is a sharp psychologist and has very little ego, which make for a great ghostwriter as she humours and coaxes Alfie into revelations. On the other hand, Alfie is such a lonely figure that Mabel’s sympathetic demeanor, intellectual match to his big-brain (he’s not all brawn, but the brawn is beefy) and common background see her succeed where anyone else would fail. The combination of humour and pathos is nicely summed up in a scene between Alfie (who has a flip phone and hates all tech) and Mabel’s normal person, not-a-Luddite attachment to her cell phone; Alfie is hefting it aloft with his 6′ 1″ reach and Mabel, at 5′ 2″, is hopping:

“Jesus. It’s not a baby, Mabel.” 

“Even though I take it everywhere with me.”

“You take lots of things everywhere with you.”

“Yeah, but do I also gently cradle them while staring lovingly at their faces?”

“Oh my god it’s a lump of plastic,” he snorted. “It does not have a face.” 

“It does when Oscar Isaac is staring out at me.”

“He is not staring out at you. His image is.” Lord, he was so practical about things. So literal and straight down the line. Like somebody’s grandad from a mining town where everybody was miserable, she thought. But weirdly, not in a way that felt mean. She didn’t hate that about him, apparently. Instead, she had the thought, and then got a little weird bloom of warmth through her. As if she was starting to like him.

Firstly, you can see how droll and adorable these two are: how Mabel is the one who has the upper hand and Alfie who is vulnerable. Scenes like this one follow one upon another so that Mabel liking Alfie makes sense. Because Alfie in love with Mabel is obvious from “first sight”. What tips everything in Alfie’s favour is his willingness to be vulnerable to Mabel. And when, in the most poignant scenes, Mabel and Alfie discover they come from similarly broken childhoods, it’s obvious to everyone except Mabel, they belong to each other and together: “He’s the other kid with you in the assembly, her mind said, about an hour in. And though that was an unsettling thought, she couldn’t deny it was true. It felt to her as if she’d always known him. As if she’d once been friends with him, years ago, and now they’d been reunited somehow.”

All this lovely stuff goes down the explicit love scene rabbit-hole and stays there for pages upon pages. And then, the Big Mis walks into the narrative room and Alfie and Mabel, who’ve talked, don’t talk to clear things up, aren’t honest about their feelings. A long period of dual selves-imposed penance occurs and then, in an awesomely romantic scene, they’re “reunited” and the HEA ensues. I’m not sure the long penance period worked, like at all, for me. But there was still much to enjoy in Stein’s grumpy-sunshine pairing (including one glorious blow at Thatcher and her version of England; much appreciated, Stein). Miss Austen agrees, in When Grumpy Met Sunshine offers “real comfort,” Emma.

Charlotte Stein’s When Grumpy Met Sunshine is published by St. Martin’s Griffin. It releases today, Feb. 6th. I received an e-galley from St. Martin’s Griffin, via Netgalley. This does not impede the free expression of my opinion, which is laid out for you above without the aid of AI.