Romance, and romantic comedy, make up a third of all novels sold – by far the highest-earning genre of fiction. They outdo crime novels 2:1. They are very rarely reviewed, and are generally excluded from year-end round ups, awards, gongs and TV book shows. They do not have their own festivals or celebrations; romance writers are extremely thin on the ground at Hay. They suffer from a triple bigotry (in an industry that likes to think itself terribly progressive): they are read by women; they are read by older women and they are read by working-class women. So it’s a landmark that the critically garlanded Curtis Sittenfeld is having a go. And what’s this? A ‘subversive’ novel, says the book’s jacket.

Sittenfeld is a marvellous writer. Her novel Prep is a tremendous book; American Wife (a fictionalised account of the life of Laura Bush, if you want an unpromising premise) is even better. And look at her latest title – that really is ballsy. Imagine writing a book just called Thriller. You’re certainly putting your cards on the table. Surely, I thought, this is going to upend the entire genre with power and humour and passion; crack open and really examine the desperate desire – of most humans, not just women – to meet the one person who will make them happier, and bigger, than living life alone. I was rubbing my hands.

And… I kept on rubbing them, right up to the last five pages. This can’t possibly be it, I thought. Something is coming which is sure to turn the plot (your classic average girl meets rich, handsome guy who, unlike all actual rich, handsome guys in the world, is looking for someone average to ground him) on its head; to pull everything apart, just as Kate Atkinson’s A Man in Ruins deconstructs historical fiction, or Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life forces us to take a long hard look at ourselves and how far we will wallow in misery.

Romantic Comedy does not remotely attempt to do this. There is nothing meta or po-mo about it, apart from its title. It is the most thoroughly conventional and mildly ridiculous romcom imaginable. The premise is that very glamorous, successful women often date slightly less attractive men – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s husband being described as a ‘Trash Panda’ springs to mind – but it never works the other way around. Well, on the whole it doesn’t, even in fiction. Elizabeth Bennett was still a beautiful young virgin, as was Anastasia Steele. Still, it’s not a bad concept.

A super-rich, handsome Josh Groban- style heart-throb musician inexplicably falls for a schlubby TV comedy writer and proves to be… completely perfect in every way. And that’s it. There is a scene where, on meeting the heroine’s sick, doubly incontinent, 81-year-old neighbour Jerry for the first time, he volunteers to bathe him. Come on! Tom Hanks would be very nice to the nurse he hired to do that, but he wouldn’t do it himself. Alan Alda would be frightfully sympathetic and everything… but someone who has been a world-famous arena rock star since he was a teenager and is also an angel is suspending belief even for me – and I was once totally convinced that Edward Cullen was good long-term relationship material.

Sally is a single writer in her thirties, working for a show like Saturday Night Live. So far, so Liz Lemon – which is a tough one to take on, because while Romantic Comedy is always amusing, it’s not 30 Rock funny; 30 Rock is one of the funniest sitcoms there’s ever been. Sally, who is white, manages to have both a black best friend and a gay best friend, double-ticking the boxes, who turn up to basically say ‘yay girl go for it’, then immediately vanish when not required, sometimes for years. But even the slight, charming Rebel Wilson film Isn’t it Romantic? was more self-aware about its tropes.

‘Searingly contemporary’, says the blurb. ‘Insanely traditional’, says this reviewer. But it’s none the worse for that. And there’s the rub. There are lots of brilliant woman authors out there doing better than this every day, not one of whom would get within a sniff of the review pages. Sittenfeld has taken this on as if it’s easy. It isn’t. This is nowhere near as good as Bridget Jones’s Diary, and certainly not good enough to bagsie the title Romantic Comedy.

It is a perfectly OK, charming piece of wish-fulfilment, and you will enjoy it. My great hope is that it might encourage you to explore some other romcom writers who push the envelope slightly further than ‘white lady with suspiciously diverse friends meets impossibly perfect man who spies her hidden inner qualities’. Sophie Kinsella, Mhairi McFarlane, Beth O’Leary, Candice Carty-Williams and a raft of cracking female authors are totally ignored by the establishment but are piled high in the supermarkets – just waiting for you to come and join the fun.