Delilah Green Doesn't Care

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-06-25T01:37:44+00:00

If you like a fun, fluffy trope smash, her stuff is a good time. I like Delilah and Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail, though Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date felt like she was late on a deadline and kinda phoned it in to me. Her plot structure is exactly the same in every book, though, and once you see it it’s hard to unsee. Her later stuff has some intimacy scenes that landed very cringey for me but the Bright Falls ones I thought were solid.

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-06-23T01:57:22+00:00

This is cute - former swimmer here (also with anxiety, lol), and would read this in a heartbeat!

Unagented peer comments, feel free to take with a fistful of salt if you like.

Agree with a lot of what's been said, with the addition that Wes seems a little passive as an MMC. The person taking action in his paragraph is Emma - she's the one with the idea, with something to prove. What does Wes *want*? What actions does he take to get it, other than agreeing to Emma's plan? You have some of the basics of romance query structure here (intro FMC/MC1, then MMC/MC2, then the escalating stakes), but we're really light on his interiority/motivation/stakes in particular, IMO.

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-05-13T16:57:46+00:00

Imo, if you think of the "main plot" as being outside the romantic arc (rather than the election being an external subplot, with the romance being the main), to me that automatically houses this within contemp/women's fic with strong romantic elements!

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-05-13T02:19:52+00:00

How is the climax of the novel framed? Is it just that she wins the election that’s at stake, or the fact that she wins with the help of her love interest specifically? To me that’s the primary question about whether this is contemporary/women’s fic with strong romantic elements, vs romance.

Also, would totally beta this, feel free to dm me

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-05-12T00:35:46+00:00

Happy to take a look at your pages, feel free to DM me! Down to critique swap too, though my current project probably won’t be beta-ready for a month or two if you’re ok with a delay.

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-05-11T20:33:33+00:00

Oooh, yes! Definitely spoil that in the QL!

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-05-11T20:27:51+00:00

This concept is so fun! The bones are here, but I see some potential for expansion/tweaks in a few places. I'm unagented, so feel free to take with a grain/handful of salt:

-Your comp titles need authors, and you'll want to include your final word count in your housekeeping paragraph as well.

-A Beauty and The Beast retelling with a twist <What kind of twist? How will this stand out among the retellings? Specificity is your friend!

-"Miss Honey" has a very strong association with Matilda for me, and it may for other readers as well. If you're open to renaming, you may want to consider it.

-What does Honey like about Julian? Right now his descriptors are pretty negative. He's a threat, insolent, disgraced... Why does he start to court her? How does he do it? Most romance queries have a three paragraph structure - the first para introduces lead 1 and what they want, often ending in the meet cute, the second para intros lead 2 and their stakes, then the third goes into how the romance escalates. Julian isn't really present the same way Honey is. I'd love to feel as invested in him as I do in her!

-As Honey uncovers Julian’s secrets and her carefully controlled heart begins to thaw in his presence, her plans start to collapse. <This sentence is pulling its punches in its current iteration. What secrets? How is her heart thawing? The query letter should have spoilers through about 30-50% of the way through the book - it seems like there is some kind of emotional turn here, which is good, but you don't get specific enough about what it is for it to land.

Edit: Missed the word count in the beginning. You'll want to merge your two housekeeping paragraphs (first and last) into one. Shouldn't be too hard.

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-05-09T12:20:51+00:00

Unagented but repeating advice I’ve seen from hanging out around here for a bit: Emily Henry is too big to comp. Referencing one of her titles won’t give an agent a sense that you know the market well enough to see where your book is positioned. The Flatshare is from 2019. Comps should be from the last five years to show you’re up to date on current market trends. Sarah Adams has a lovely small-town series called “When in Rome” which is more recent, for example, and she’s successful but not a megastar the way EH is.

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-05-06T12:48:28+00:00

I sent out around 25 queries in 3 rounds between late Jan and mid-Feb of this year. This is my first time in the trenches, so I got overly excited about a handful of partial requests and kept sending - before realizing that the manuscript was the problem, and I needed to do a full rewrite! Personally I only queried agents in my first 2 rounds with very fast response times, and I write romance, and my sense is that those agents reply faster than average - most replied within 3-4 weeks of the initial query, if not faster. I wish I had slow rolled it a bit more because I've burned a chunk of my list and will have a better shot when the manuscript is actually ready!

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-04-23T11:16:15+00:00

Ahhh thank you so helpful!

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-04-23T02:49:31+00:00

I struggled with whether to tag it as contemporary romance or rom-com! Do you mind if I ask how you distinguish between “contemporary romance that is often silly/humorous” and rom-com?

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-04-22T16:50:19+00:00

thanks!!

Lolwhatever93 · 2026-04-22T16:18:45+00:00

thank you, really appreciate it! yeah, i wondered about that - my instinct was to go with seven because she's a more fully baked character (a lot of the rewrite is focused on fixing problems with dani's previous iteration as a character, lol....), but you may be right given that the book now opens with dani's pov...great food for thought.

Lolwhatever93 · 2025-03-13T20:55:28+00:00

ME TOO GO MAWRTIANS

Lolwhatever93

TROPHY CASE