Chris Coppernoll’s “Screen Play”

Confession time.

I like chick flicks. Well, most of them. Like “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail.”

I am known to cry at movies. That’s both at the movie theater and in my family room watching something from Netflix. It doesn’t embarrass my wife because she got used to it after the first 200 or 300 times. I did this in college, too. I saw “Love Story” with Ryan O’Neill and Ali McGraw three times, with three different dates, and I cried at all three. My dates, I should point out, all remained dry-eyed.

I am known to read the occasional love story, too. And yes, if there are weepy scenes in the novel, well, yes, you get the picture.

Guys aren’t supposed to do this. My father didn’t. If he were still alive, he’d die of embarrassment if he knew. My mother knows; she just shakes her head. I’ve kept it hidden from my brothers.

The simple fact is, I’m a sucker for a love story.

Chris Coppernoll’s Screen Play is a love story. It has weepy scenes. I read it in almost one sitting.

Coppernoll is the author of two previous novels – Providence and A Beautiful Fall. Providence is like a love story for guys; A Beautiful Fall is a love story not for guys. I’ve read them both. I liked them both.

Screen Play is about a young actress who’s struggling with her career and her love life – a career that seems to have died and a romance that did die when her boyfriend took off for California. All she has going for her is her faith, and she hangs on to it. Through a good friend, she gets the role of understudy in a Broadway revival. And she meets a guy through an online dating service, a guy who sounds perfect except he’s a pilot in Alaska. They text each other back and forth for a while until he gives her his phone number.

Then she gets her stage break. And it’s huge. Hollywood beckons.

If all of this sounds wildly implausible and clichéd, it is – except in Coppernoll’s hands. Screen Play is fast-paced and well written, and he tells a great story. Especially impressive is that he tells the story through a woman’s point of view, that of the heroine, Harper Gray.

Nice job, Mr. Coppernoll.

And, well, did I get teary-eyed at the weepy scenes?

What do you think?


Since the Federal Trade Commission has nothing else better to do, and in the interests of total disclosure, I should let you know that the publisher provided me with a review copy of Screen Play. I was given no other remuneration or freebie (unless you count the news release accompanying the book, which I don’t). In fact, I asked the publisher to review this book, because I thoroughly enjoyed reading Providence. The publisher did not ask me to give a positive review. And I follow Mr. Coppernoll on Twitter, but he doesn’t tweet much. There’s now nothing left to disclose.