Carley Fortune says an unreleased critic and author romance may redefine enemies to lovers

Carley Fortune says the enemies-to-lovers romance to watch is an unreleased debut about a literary critic and the author whose books she has torched. Her actual praise was not polite jacket-copy mist. She called it almost genre redefining and said the bar for the trope has been set “very very high.”

That is a big swing from the reigning cottage-core czarina of commercial summer fiction, a writer whose brand is basically lake water, old feelings, and a man you absolutely should have gotten over by now. On Booked, Blonde & Busy, Fortune was asked for her ideal beach read, and instead of defining it as a pastel cover with a Aperol spritz nearby, she gave a better answer: velocity.

I want something that’s like really compulsive and that you can’t put down.

That is the beach-read doctrine in one sentence. Not necessarily light. Not necessarily romance. Not necessarily whatever the algorithm has decided should be photographed next to a floppy hat. Fortune says the ideal beach read can be general fiction, a thriller, or a romance, as long as it has that one criminal quality: it steals the afternoon.

I especially I think love dramatic stories about women like friendships or sisters or where it’s just high drama and I like that to me is a is a beach read.

The recommendation is juicy. The metadata is messy

Here is the irritating part for anyone who likes to leave a podcast with a preorder tab open: the captioned audio garbles the title and author name. I’m not going to launder a transcription guess into fact. What Fortune clearly describes is a forthcoming debut adult novel, an enemies-to-lovers setup built around a literary critic who has absolutely flattened an author in print.

She’s given like the most brutal reviews to and it’s about their their relationship.

As a premise, that’s not just catnip. It’s industrial-grade trope engineering. Enemies-to-lovers works best when the enemy status is not a misunderstanding that could be fixed by one brave text message. A critic who has publicly panned your first two books? That’s durable hatred. That’s professional damage. That’s Thanksgiving-level resentment with Goodreads receipts.

Fortune’s praise also lands because she doesn’t talk about the book as merely cute. She talks about the writing. She talks about sharpness. In romance, “enemies to lovers” can become a label slapped on two people who mildly inconvenience each other in chapter three. Fortune is saying this one actually earns the boxing gloves.

so smart so sharp. The writing is brilliant. I think it’s almost a genre redefining romance.

Believe the rave, but price in the beach chair factor

The fair read: this is a real recommendation, not a casual “loved it!” tossed into the content furnace. Fortune gives the premise, the trope, the reason it works, and the scale of her reaction. The skeptical read: authors are generous on podcasts, especially about books that are not out yet, and “genre redefining” is the kind of phrase that can look very different after the group chat has had its way with it.

Still, her taste map is useful. She also praised a forthcoming Annabel Monaghan romance as a fake-dating story that is secretly about family and “what it means to live a good life.” That’s the Fortune sweet spot: commercial hooks with emotional architecture. The beach umbrella is decoration. The feelings are load-bearing.

It is the bar is set very very high. Like I’m not sure how you could write a better enemies to lovers to be honest.