Exes and O's

Tara Chen reads romance novels the way other people read the news, and she knows what a love story should look like. Ten men have dumped her, each one put off by what they called her stage-five clinger streak. She still wants to find The One, and she has decided that modern dating apps have killed the classic meet-cute.

Her new plan is to go back through her exes and look for a second-chance romance worthy of the tropes she loves. Help comes from an unlikely place: Trevor Metcalfe, her new roommate in Boston. He is a firefighter who runs toward burning buildings but keeps well away from relationships, since love has never been his thing.

Trevor agrees, reluctantly, to help Tara reconnect with the men who left her. As the two spend more time together, Tara notices that he is the one person who seems to appreciate her dramatic, unfiltered self. Trevor, for his part, finds his own life shifting as he follows her search.

This is a romantic comedy with a roommates-to-lovers pull and a heroine who is openly obsessed with the genre she stars in. The tone is light and playful, built on the question of whether Tara has been looking in the wrong places all along.