Title: The Lucky Coin
Author: C.L. Rain
Date: 2023
Quote: "The Wishing Springs Whisper...This was my father's legacy."
Linda Lou inherits the newspaper in a small Southern town. With the job comes a single male reporter who gets on her nerves in the way young people who like each other, but aren't quite certain what to do about it, tend to get on each other's nerves. Then there's the gossip reporter, a classic small-town old biddy who loves gossip, scandal, and especially hints of illicit romance.
Sales are slow. It happens in small towns full of older people who lose the ability to read the paper and whose chldren think they can get their news from a (censored, worthless) big city news media site. Linda and Darrel, the reporter, ponder what to do after the gossip reporter leaves, and Linda suggests that they give readers a romance--a sweet, wholesome fake romance. He's going to be the best fake boyfriend ever.
I can believe it's going to work, because the author's already shown that the characters like each other and want to keep their paper profitable. And, of course, because you can't sell a book as a sweet romance these days unless it does work. Victorian readers thought nothing was sweeter than a story of young people who loved each other, in a wholesome way, had to separate for a few months for some reason, planned to marry after they'd done whatever it was that caused this temporary situation, and died before they saw each other again, or one of them did. The other one might die within the year--there were a lot of infectious diseases in those days--or take religious vows of celibacy or something that guaranteed readers a good cry. But in the twentieth century stories that made vulnerable readers cry ceased to be considered romantic. Now all romances come with guaranteed happy endings.
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