[QCrit] Adult Romantic Comedy SINGLE RIDER (72K/First Attempt)
I’m new to the world of Reddit and querying, and yesterday I sent my final query in my first round… to my dream agent. Now comes the agonizing part: wondering whether I actually have a shot.
My manuscript is an adult rom-com with what I hope is broad commercial appeal, though it does have a distinct Disney-adult backdrop and sensibility. My beta readers have responded really positively to the humor, emotional arc, and overall accessibility of the story, but I’d love honest feedback on whether the query itself is working.
I’ve queried most of the agents currently open specifically to rom-coms, and my next step will likely be expanding into the broader romance category. I’d truly appreciate any thoughts or constructive critique. Thank you!
Dear Dream Agent,
At thirty-three, Vivian Murphy is about to check the final box on her life's to-do list: marrying her fiancé, Daniel. Instead, he leaves her at the altar, stranding her with a nonrefundable Disney honeymoon she is too practical to waste and too humiliated to enjoy. She goes anyway.
Within hours, everything falls apart. Florida storms, wardrobe malfunctions, and a series of increasingly public mishaps leave her unraveling in the most magical place on earth, all witnessed by a calm, annoyingly handsome stranger named Nic. Convinced he is a YouTube vlogger documenting her spiral for viral content, Vivian is determined to avoid him. Unfortunately, he keeps reappearing at her worst moments.
Back in Atlanta, things do not improve. She is forced to work alongside her ex, who seems to have processed the breakup at record speed. Vivian moves back into her childhood bedroom, and lies awake beneath a ceiling of Jonas Brothers posters that feel aggressively optimistic given her current situation. After a Christmas party meltdown turns her into an HR cautionary tale, she takes a new job in Orlando for a fresh start, only to discover her first client is Nic. He is not a vlogger at all, but a doctor of nutrition science building a wellness brand inspired by his Greek family. As they work together, Vivian mistakenly believes Nic is unavailable, which makes her growing attraction feel safely irrelevant.
But working with Nic begins to shift something. Vivian starts to want a life that is not perfectly planned, but one that actually feels right. When a high-stakes campaign sends them to Greece, her luggage, last seen strapped to the roof of a van, never arrives, leaving her in his grandmother's clothes and far outside anything she could have planned.
When a family emergency pulls her back to Atlanta, Vivian must decide whether she is willing to let go of the life she planned for one that is messier, uncertain, and a little bit more magical.
SINGLE RIDER is a 72,000-word contemporary romantic comedy that blends the vacation chaos of The Unhoneymooners, the romantic tension of The Hating Game, and the emotional reinvention of Beach Read.
We are sisters writing romantic comedies under the pen name Annie Hart. After Annie's second battle with breast cancer, we turned to humor as a way through difficult seasons and bonded over the kind of laughter that carries you forward. When we struggled to find books that truly made us laugh out loud, we decided to write our own. We live in Florida, minutes from Walt Disney World, which inspired the setting of SINGLE RIDER.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Warm regards,
Annie Hart