At first Bethany Lu Carlisle can’t believe what she’s hearing. Keanu Reeves, her super crush forever, is getting married in three months. No way, she thinks trying to dismiss the thought before doing a frantic internet search to find out if it’s really true.
It’s a vulnerable time for Lu. She’s having difficulty with her creative process which is a fundamental problem given that she’s an artist with a show coming up at her best friend Dawn’s New York City gallery. She also is fielding a business offer from a shark-like, uber rich entrepreneur who wants to brand her work. It’s a very lucrative deal but Lu is afraid of losing control over her own work and besides the guy is way too “hands-on.” Plus, her other best friend, True, the handsome college professor who wrote a definitive and highly praised book on some type of economic theory—Lu hasn’t read it—is getting job offers from West Coast businesses and has an attractive and overly-friendly research assistant. Like Keanu, True has been a serious crush for Lu but she’s never let him know it. We don’t think it’s a spoiler alert to let you know that he’s been crazy over her for the last 20-plus years as well.
All this calls for a drastic shake-up to get her life back on track and what better way than to track down Keanu and convince him if he’s going to marry, then she’s available.
Sure, it sounds flaky but remember How to Marry Keanu Reeves in 90 Days is a romantic comedy (rom-com) written by USA bestselling author Kwana Jackson under the pen name K.M. Jackson. It’s the latest in the many rom-coms novels she’s authored.
Jackson, who was born in Harlem, is just as obsessed with Keanu as Lu and it seems to be a real life family trait.
“I called my mother today like I do every day and she was busy watching a John Wick movie,” she said in a recent phone interview.
For the five people in this country who don’t know, John Wick is a lethal and ruthless assassin played by Keanu Reeves in a series of movies by the same name. Retired, Wick is forced back into business to track down his adversaries—a seeming endless task that results in a high rate of carnage in each of the four movies.
The idea for her book started with a fun tweet Jackson posted after realizing the next Matrix movie starring Reeves as well as the newest John Wick film would come out on the same day.
“When I saw that, I tweeted don’t bring out your next book on Keanu day,” said Jackson who was bombarded with comments about the book she was supposed to write and told by her agent she’d better get to work on it.
But that really wasn’t a problem for Jackson.
“I’ve always been an un-ashamed romance book lover and romance has given me a wonderful place to escape into when I need a place to decompress,” she said. “It makes me happy to write a place for people to escape into.”
This review previously appeared in the NWI Times.
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