This Is What Happy Looks Like

This is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith was a very cute contemporary book. It contains parts that are adorable, funny, and heartwarming. I give it about a 3.5-4/5 star rating.

This books follows the strange long distance friendship between two pen pals, Ellie and Graham. Ellie lives in the middle of no where Maine and Graham is a new teenage movie star in California. They have no idea who each other are. They accidentally started talking one day when Graham sent Ellie an e-mail but it was meant for his friend. This is how their friendship started.

Now, I think it went very quickly from their e-mails to meeting in person. It was about the second or third chapter. Graham is just like “What if we move our movie set to Maine?!” And then when he gets there, he immediately (kinda stalkerish) looks for her and ends up accidentally asking out her best friend that was wearing her shirt!

This book was very cute but they didn't have much of a “spark” connection. It just seems kind of between the lines type of romance where the readers has to imagine their spark instead of reading it. Which kind of sucks but I believed that they genially liked each other.

I really enjoyed the parts where they were talking though e-mail but it was kind of strange that they even used that when they were together. Why didn't they just text or call? The e-mails would go straight to their phone so it is sort of the same thing. I really enjoyed the part where it showed Ellie's saved drafts for e-mails she was going to send out.

Overall, this was a good decent contemporary read. I almost read the entire thing during my short work shift because it was easy to breeze through. I would recommend it to anyone though that likes contemporary books and cute little romances.

*3.5 STARS.

(Review originally posted here at The Book Barbies.)

I read This Is What Happy Looks Like for the Spring into Summer Readalong. Thankfully, I enjoyed it a lot more than The Vincent Boys. I love how Jennifer E. Smith gets such unique titles, yet they match the book completely. This book had me smiling so much! And it had some fabulously quotable lines:

“How can you know it makes you happy if you've never experienced it?” – “There are different kinds of happy,” she said. “Some kinds don't need any proof.”

This Is What Happy Looks Like

Priceless

This Is What Happy Looks Like

I don't know what I was expecting from this book since I didn't enjoy [b:The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight 10798416 The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight Jennifer E. Smith http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1337187623s/10798416.jpg 15464655] as much as I hoped. This book kind of left me feeling the same way. It was a quick read, but it was lacking in some way. I also wish there were more emails on the book. I didn't connect to the characters, but the ending was cute and it bumped my rating up to 3 stars.

I think I have a bit of an issue with books that most people seem to love. Immediately I want to be convinced, and swept away, and surprised. Sometimes it happens, and I grudgingly have to admit to my own grumpiness. Sometimes it doesn't.
This one was a remaining grumpiness state. The plot was so absurd that I only read because I'm a sucker for e-mails/letters in books, but it kept on being just stupid. A bit sad, with the whole “movie star” and “nobody gets me” issue, from both sides, (moment of enlightenment here because both feel like that) but just plain boring and SO unrealistic.
Finally, since it was unrealistic, I expected at least strong feelings enough to be, well, really unreal. But it felt lukewarm most of the time, you know, not even omg they are ridiculously happy they don't even care we think they are absurd.
So, all in all, it didn't speak to me. Which is a bit sad, since I'm such a fan of teenage love stories and hoped to find a Rainbow Rowell sister. No such luck.

Now THIS is a proper YA romance! It has no insta-love (they don't even meet for several months), no sex (they do kiss a bit), no protestations of eternal love or marriage proposals (they'd like to keep dating to see where things go), no soulmates (they feel “comfortable” because of their prior email correspondence), and they still act like teenagers instead of wanna-be adults.