As Seen on TV

by Meredith Schorr

Genres: Jewish Fiction; Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Fans of the Hallmark Channel and Gilmore Girls will adore this delightful rom‑com about a city girl who goes in search of small-town happiness, only to discover life—and love—are nothing like the TV movies.

Emerging journalist Adina Gellar is done with dating in New York City. If she’s learned anything from made-for-TV romance movies, it’s that she’ll find love in a small town—the kind with harvest festivals, delightful but quirky characters, and scores of delectable single dudes. So when a big-city real estate magnate targets tiny Pleasant Hollow for development, Adi knows she’s found the perfect story—one that will earn her a position at a coveted online magazine, so she can finally start adulting for real . . . and maybe even find her dream man in the process. 

Only Pleasant Hollow isn’t exactly “pleasant.” There’s no charming bakery, no quaint seasonal festivals, and the residents are more ambivalent than welcoming. The only upside is Finn Adams, who’s more mouthwatering than the homemade cherry pie Adi can’t seem to find—even if he does work for the company she’d hoped to bring down. Suddenly Adi has to wonder if maybe TV got it all wrong after all. But will following her heart mean losing her chance to break into the big time?

Release date: June 7, 2022

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter One

The TV screen zoomed in on the face of a young Jennifer Hudson a moment after Carrie Bradshaw had asked why she moved to New York City.

“To fall in love.”

I groaned, even though I’d known the line was coming. “Mistake number one, Louise from St. Louis. But you’ll find out soon enough.”

From her spot on the couch, my mom looked over her shoulder with wide eyes. “You’re home early. How was it?”

I hung the denim jacket I hadn’t needed in the hallway closet. Mother Nature, in loud and clear opposition to the unofficial end of summer, had shown us who was boss with record-breaking ninety-degree temperatures, days after Labor Day. “My date stood me up. Maybe he fell off his Citi Bike and twisted his ankle, or perhaps he liquefied in the sun. Don’t know. Don’t care.” I hadn’t expected a first date with a guy I’d met on Hinge to lead to marriage, a committed relationship, or even a second date—at twenty-five years old, I’d been dating in New York City long enough to know better—but was showing up too much to ask?

Mom raised her glass of wine. “There’s an open bottle on the kitchen counter. You look like you need it.”

After pouring a glass of rosé, I sat beside her on our deep-blue velvet sofa in the apartment where we’d lived since I was four. I kicked off my sandals and wiggled my toes. “It’s hilarious how tourists paint this city as the romance capital of America when it is the worst. The worst.” I pointed at the screen. “Even Louise had to go back to her hometown to snag her man.”

Mom wiped a smudge from the glass surface of the coffee table. “I’m not sure I like how hard you’re being on our fair Manhattan, Squirt.”

I made a face. I’d asked her to stop calling me that when I reached puberty and decided it was disgusting, but my complaining had the opposite effect and sealed the nickname into eternal status.

“All of your big moments happened here,” she continued. “You learned to read and ride a bike. You became a woman. And I mean that in all of the important ways—you got your period, you lost your virginity, you had your bat mitzvah.”

“Not in that order.”

She huffed. “I should hope not. I’ll report myself to child services if you were already sexually active when you stood on the bimah at East End Temple and sang ‘Adon Olam’ to a room of tweens from PS 19.”

I snuggled into my mom’s side and took comfort in her familiar scent of Estée Lauder Beautiful. “No need to call ACS.”

“Relief. The blow-offs and false starts are all part of the adventure, Adi.”

My bad luck with men went as far back as sophomore year of high school, when I’d been catfished by a pimply thirteen-year-old pretending to be his hot eighteen-year-old cousin. I wanted off the ride.

I muted the TV. We’d both seen the first Sex and the City movie at least five times.

“How are you not jaded after all these years?” I asked. Mom had been mostly single since my dad died when I was three. She insisted she didn’t want to remarry, but I knew she sought something more reliable from a male companion than what she was getting on OkCupid and Plenty of Fish.

We’d always been close, but now that we were both single city girls, we had more in common than ever. Even our dating pool overlapped sometimes, despite our twenty-three-year age difference. Twentysomething men flocked to my seasoned but very well-maintained forty-eight-year-old mother as often as middle-aged men messaged me. It should have been weird, but it wasn’t. To clarify, men my age wanting to bang my mom was weird. Swapping dating stories with her was not.

“Getting ghosted is nothing. Try losing your soulmate in a car crash at twenty-six.” Her cringe matched mine. “Never mind. Don’t try that.” She kissed the top of my head and pulled back. “Um, Adi. I hate to break it to you but—”

I shot up. “I smell. I know. I only had time for a five-minute shower after spin class to make it to the date that wasn’t. And it’s crazy humid.”

“You don’t smell. But you did have a Jolly Rancher stuck in your hair.”

“I had…” I touched my scalp. “What?”

She waved the hard candy in front of me—it was green apple—and stood to throw it out.

“Eww! Probably from some sticky child on the subway.” I shuddered and ran my fingers through my hair. What would I find next, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup? “I’m done with this day. DONE.”

Mom returned to the couch and gave me an apologetic grin. “Sorry, Squirt,” she said, patting my leg.

“Tomorrow will be better.” I closed my eyes and breathed in positivity like I always urged in my cycling classes—inhale love, exhale stress. I’d have a good night’s sleep and start fresh in the morning.

Ping.

I opened my eyes, pulled my phone from my purse, and checked my Gmail. A second later, I wished I hadn’t.

Hi Adina,

Thanks for reaching out! Unfortunately, I didn’t get that WOW vibe over this pitch. I agree your role as a part-time barista could add a personal touch to a piece on a latte art competition, but the timing is off. Readers won’t care about a summer event in the fall. Feel free to nudge me about this after the New Year. In the meantime, please keep pitching. I’m a fan!

Derek

My shoulders dropped in disappointment. Derek was the editor of Tea, a weekly online pop-culture magazine where I’d interned while studying for my bachelor’s degree in journalism during college. It was mostly office work (coffee runs and filing), but I was also responsible for proofreading the editorial calendar and was sometimes allowed to tag along with writers out on a story. A full-time position hadn’t been available after graduation, and I quickly discovered that the chances of landing my dream job as a journalist for the entertainment, media, or lifestyle sections of the New York Times or New York Post without any prior publishing credits—or even with them—were about the same as a sixth grader’s.

“What is it?”

I gulped my wine. “Another oh-so-encouraging pass from DerDick.” She knew all about his particular brand of charm. He passed on all my freelance proposals, always concluding his rejections with a complimentary sentence about my writing skills and eagerly inviting me to keep pitching. But I was certain our history and my access to his direct email account was a gift that would eventually give as long as I kept at it. In fact, when he’d hired me to write Tea’s list column for a month, to cover for a staff writer on medical leave, I scored my first four professional bylines: “Ten books to read between seasons of Stranger Things”; “Five vegan recipes that have meat lovers screaming, ‘Yaaas!’”; “Twenty shopping trends Gen Z is bringing back”; and “Five best pet monitoring apps.” These credentials strengthened my portfolio, and updating my website and social media afterward had filled me with pride. My faith in Derek wasn’t entirely without justification, but it was wearing thin.

Mom mumbled, “Shit,” then frowned. “I’m sorry. Keep pitching. Persistence and patience, right?”

“I guess.” She was repeating what I’d always told her about trying to make a living as a lifestyle journalist. But it was getting harder to persist.

Hustling two jobs teaching spin classes and working the counter at a coffee shop while cold-pitching publications like Tea—not to mention the almost daily scouring of freelance sites like FlexJobs and ProBlogger for writing gigs—was exhausting. The competition in the city was merciless. When Sinatra said if you can make it in New York, you could make it anywhere, maybe he was really encouraging us to aim lower.

“I wonder sometimes…” I brought my wineglass to my mouth and emptied the contents.

“Am I supposed to complete the sentence? Are we playing that game now?”

I returned the glass to the table and looked at her. “New York City can be a lonely place. Sometimes I think we’d have been better off staying in Indiana.”

Mom scrunched her face, the faint wrinkles in her forehead becoming more pronounced. “How so?”

“Less competition for jobs, for one.” I could write lifestyle and entertainment features for the local paper—like the Stars Hollow Gazette from Gilmore Girls. I’d binge-watched the series on Netflix and loved it. Mother and daughter living in a storybook town, surrounded by eccentric neighbors? Yes, please.

“Not necessarily. With fewer people come fewer opportunities.”

I chewed my lip. “True.” I was fairly certain the Stars Hollow Gazette had a staff of five. “But I’ll bet the residents are friendlier and not as attached to their phones.” Although I was too young to remember the small town where I was born, I pictured bright blue skies, green grass, and trees—a lot of trees. I envisioned a town square buzzing with activity. I imagined being greeted by everyone who crossed our path like they knew us. Where neighbors weren’t just people who happened to live on the same street but people we could trust, who watched out for us like family.

“Doubtful. Small-town life is so dull. I’m sure everyone is glued to TMZ and MTV News all day.”

I mock-glared at her. “Do you have an answer for everything?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Try me.”

“Dating is probably less complicated. With a smaller population, word would get around about guys who stood up their dates or went MIA after a month. Who would take the risk of being labeled a flake?” A dating pool where men sought more from a connection than their own gratification or just passing the time, and where dick pics weren’t a thing, sounded heavenly.

“For one thing, love and sex are never simple. And for another, our pickings would be so slim, we’d run out of available men. You’d never have that problem here.”

“You met Dad in a small town!” They’d been high school sweethearts. “I’m not sure having unlimited options is a good thing.” I’d venture the single life in small towns was more about romantic walks and drinking cocoa than getting drunk and laid. Sex was great, but I’d bet it was even better in a relationship based on friendship, mutual respect, and attraction.

“Trust me, I’m your mother.” She stood and stretched her arms above her head, and it was like staring at a reflection of my future self. We shared the same light skin with a natural blush and faint dusting of freckles, and the same naturally wavy auburn hair, except the tips of mine were dyed hot pink and she had highlights to cover the gray. At five-foot-three, she was shorter than me by one inch, and we were both small-boned with almost nonexistent boobs. The only feature we didn’t have in common was our eye color. Hers were baby blue, and mine were a combination of brown and green with flecks of gold. I got those from my dad. “Moving you out of Nappanee twenty-one years ago was the best decision I ever made.”

After my dad died, she hadn’t wanted to be a burden on her folks, so when her well-connected best friend from college (my honorary Aunt Heather) found her a rent-stabilized apartment in Manhattan and a job with health insurance and a 401(k) at her father’s medical practice, she packed her bags and toddler and headed east. She was now a certified physician assistant and a proud New Yorker. “You can go anywhere in the world and recognize good pizza and bagels. The tap water here is amazing! And what about the ethnic and cultural diversity? You can’t find the same mix of world influences in small-town America.” She leaned down and tapped my nose. “Trust me,” she repeated. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

She was correct. I didn’t. But I couldn’t find the words to express my increasing wanderlust for an environment so different from the one where I’d spent most of my life. Mom would say I watched too many Hallmark movies and romanticized small-town life. She wouldn’t be wrong.

My best friend Kate and I had a two-person book club where we read romance novels by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Brenda Jackson, and Kristan Higgins, to name a few, set in quaint towns. And what began in high school as a once-a-year movie marathon in our pajamas branched into a yearlong tradition of monthly movie dates during Hallmark’s Winterfest, Countdown to Valentine’s Day, Spring Fling, June Weddings, Christmas in July, Summer Nights, Fall Harvest, and finally Countdown to Christmas.

After returning our empty glasses to the kitchen, Mom stood before me. “Heading to bed. You?”

“I’m going to stay out here for a bit. Not tired. Sweet dreams, Mom.”

“You too, Squirt. You working tomorrow?”

“Not until noon.” I had a shift at the café the next day. Living with my mom allowed me to save money, since she generously paid all the rent while I handled smaller expenses like utilities, internet, and our various streaming services. But I needed to stand on my own eventually.

I was trying to save, but it was slow going since spin instructors and coffee baristas didn’t exactly make a livable wage. I supplemented my income with freelance writing assignments. The experience was good for building my portfolio, but I worked best with external accountability. My dream was to secure a full-time journalist job, writing uplifting and engaging lifestyle stories, not submitting proposals to create dry content about household appliances. Additionally, many of the best freelance writing sites charged fees, took a portion of your earnings, or both. It was often counterproductive. Until I could catch my big break, I was grateful for rent-free living and a mother with whom I got along famously and who was in no rush to kick me out. This placed me at the back of the pack in terms of evolving into a full-fledged adult, but my time would come. Eventually.

Now, alone on the couch with sole custody of the remote, I switched the channel to a Million Dollar Listing New York marathon on Bravo. It would be easy to use the show as an escape in the same way I watched Hallmark movies—to engulf myself in a world so foreign to my own and play “what if.” But it wouldn’t serve my career or further my goal of financial independence. Instead, I kept the show on in the background while I checked my regular sites for new freelance-writing job postings. Monitoring these platforms took more time than I typically had, so my goal of submitting daily often dwindled to weekly. But you had to move fast, because open slots were snatched up quick.

On the ProBlogger site, I skipped over a listing for a freelance wedding blogger. A passion for weddings was the top requirement, and based on my experience tonight, I hadn’t even mastered the art of the first date. Instead, I kept scrolling until I found a posting by a small business seeking a writer/researcher for a coffee brand. They specifically sought someone with related experience, like a barista. Bingo. I submitted the online application, attaching my writing samples, closed down my computer, and gave Million Dollar Listing my full attention. I’d earned it.

I figured I’d watch an episode or two before turning in, but the effects of the day wore me down, and I found myself dozing off on the couch still wearing my dress and in full makeup. “Never go to sleep in your makeup!” Okay, Mom! She hadn’t actually said this—tonight anyway—but it was one of the many lessons she’d ingrained in me growing up: the gospel of Valerie Gellar.

I reluctantly stood to wash my face. It would give me the requisite second wind to finish the episode. The prematurely silver-haired real estate agent Ryan was featured prominently in this one, and I had a little crush. But more than his twinkly gray-blue eyes, it was what his assistant said next that made me forget all about the damaging effects of wearing makeup overnight.

“Please explain to me what Andrew Hanes sees in the reclusive town of Pleasant Hollow. Didn’t he make his billions developing real estate in New York and LA?”

I fell back onto the couch and racked my brain for why this dialogue on a reality show struck a familiar chord. I’d never heard of Andrew Hanes or been to Pleasant Hollow. Yet I was riveted. I leaned forward as if it would help me hear better.

On the screen, Ryan propped his elbows on the granite kitchen island in the apartment he was showing that day—in one of Andrew Hanes’s newest buildings in SoHo. “He follows the money and sees an untapped opportunity in an underdeveloped community. He says the area has been lost in time, completely disregarded for the gem it is.” Ryan went on to explain how Hanes, the real estate mogul who had made much of his money investing in new property in Tribeca during the early aughts, hoped that by building a condo complex in Pleasant Hollow with its own shopping center, restaurant, and gym on the lobby level, he could capitalize on families searching for the luxuries of suburbia with the convenience of being close to New York City. With real estate prices driving people north of Westchester and Rockland Counties, the location of Pleasant Hollow in nearby Orange County was ideal.

His assistant smirked. “Are you sure you’re not mistaking Hanes’s plans with the plot of a Hallmark movie?”

My mouth dropped open and I smacked my forehead. No wonder the conversation sounded so familiar. I’d watched the same exact storyline play out on TV a hundred times. I laughed all the way to the bathroom. Good luck, Mr. Hanes. These sorts of business endeavors never worked out for the greedy real estate mogul in the movies.

I changed my mind about watching more television and went right to bed after a quick shower to wash any remnants of hard candy out of my hair. But I had a restless sleep. I dreamed about walking along Main Street in a sleepy town as snow fell steadily from a star-filled sky. It must have been December, because all the storefronts were decorated with garlands and blinking Christmas lights. My nose wasn’t red and running, my hair was smooth and silky, and although I was barely bundled up, I didn’t feel the cold. The handsome, unmarried mayor asked me to do the honors of lighting the Christmas tree at the annual tree-lighting ceremony, even though I was Jewish.

From the podium, I was poised to press the button, when I jolted awake. My thoughts immediately flew to Andrew Hanes and whether he had ever followed through on his plans for Pleasant Hollow. It weighed on me as if I had a vested interest, and I needed to know. It was a little before five a.m. when I tiptoed out of my bedroom to avoid waking my mom, brewed a Dunkin’ Donuts French Vanilla K-Cup, and powered up my laptop.

My first stop was Google. The Million Dollar Listing episode was probably filmed several months in advance, which meant if Andrew Hanes had moved forward with his investment in the town, it would come up among the initial results in a search of his name. The first link was: “Real Estate Tycoon Andrew Hanes to Invest Millions in Remote Upstate New York Town of Pleasant Hollow.” Score! I fist-pumped the air. The article described how Pleasant Hollow, a hamlet with a population of just under two thousand, had been almost completely overshadowed by the higher-profile and larger neighboring towns of Middletown, Newburgh, Monroe, and Goshen for decades until Hanes announced his interest.

I took a sip of my coffee and kept reading. According to the piece, Hanes had already purchased a large plot of unoccupied land in the town and was currently finalizing architectural and engineering plans for a combination condo/rental complex he was calling “The Hollows.” From there, I went to the Wikipedia page for Pleasant Hollow, then clicked on all the reference links at the bottom. Based on the pictures online, it looked exactly like what one would expect from a small town. The majority of the businesses—a hardware store, nail salon, bookstore, diner, etc.—were located along Main Street, and there was a town square and a park that ran along the Hudson River. Pleasant Hollow’s biggest claim to fame was a ballerina who was born and raised there, and a statue in the park had been erected in her honor. A brewery run by two brothers overlooked the river, and a pizza place housing a forty-year-old brick oven from Italy was the culinary spotlight. A pearl of an idea forming in my brain, I took screenshots of all the photos and saved them in a new folder on my computer.

Two hours later, after unearthing everything I could about Pleasant Hollow without enlisting the help of a shady character with access to the dark web, I veered my attention to Andrew Hanes. I tracked his professional history, saving articles about his previous ventures—Pleasant Hollow being his first in a small town—into the newly created file.

Finally, I aimed my research at Hallmark movies featuring quaint towns under attack by a big-city developer. In the last few years, movies like Love Struck Café, Under the Autumn Moon, Christmas in Love, and The Story of Us had premiered with viewership numbers between two and four million each.

My intense concentration drowned out the clunky sound Mom’s boots made as she walked through the living room from her bedroom to the kitchen and back again while she got ready for work. I shooed away her attempts at conversation with apologetic gestures toward my laptop. By the time she bent down to kiss me goodbye on her way out, I had to pee so bad it hurt. But I had an idea for my next story—my big, career-making breakout story.

Chapter Two

The Heart of TV in your own backyard.

Close your eyes and picture a quaint small town. I’ll bet your visual includes a main street lined with family-owned shops and a town square with a park running through it. The locals are happy, perhaps a little set in their ways and quirky, but loyal and devoted to the town, its people, and its traditions. Now imagine this hidden gem threatened by the arrival of a wealthy and powerful businessperson, an outsider bent on wiping out everything that makes it unique.

It sounds like the plot of a Hallmark movie, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. It’s also a real-life story playing out sixty miles north of New York City. The town is Pleasant Hollow. The intruder is city-based real estate tycoon Andrew Hanes.

From my uncomfortable wicker chair in the café during my break later that afternoon, for the umpteenth time, I read the next paragraph, in which I’d presented my idea to do a feature on the charming and picturesque town of Pleasant Hollow, its residents, and their reaction to Andrew Hanes and the construction of The Hollows.

Was Derek reading it right now? He’d only commission me to write it if he saw, like I had, the allure of the feature. I’d stressed the massive appeal to the pop-culture-obsessed readers of Tea. Who could resist the story of a real small town living out a TV plotline?

Then I’d done the unthinkable. I’d granted him a forty-eight-hour exclusive, threatening to cast a wider net if I didn’t hear from him by then. Whether the confidence had come from lack of sleep, overcaffeination, or actual belief in the strength of the story was anyone’s guess, but I was too anxious to chance the standard wait time of between one hour and three months to hear back. The article also had an element of urgency to it, given the increased interest in Hallmark movies during the channel’s Countdown to Christmas season. I’d mentioned this specifically to cut off another rejection by DerDick based on “bad timing” if we waited until after the New Year.

Bu. . .