allisonsbeautifullife 's review for:

This Is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith

5.0

---

This is What Happy Looks Like was written by Jennifer E. Smith and originally published in April 2013 by Poppy.

If fate sent you an email, would you answer?

Ellie is a small town girl living in Maine with her mother and working at the local ice cream shop. When she accidentally receives an email from a guy about walking his pet pig she decides to reply and let him know that he had emailed the wrong person. Soon they start talking about everything except their names which they decide to conceal. Ellie finds herself waiting impatiently to see emails from him pop up, but what she doesn’t realize is that the guy she has been talking to is actually Graham Larkin the teen movie star. When Graham finds out that Ellie lives in a location which would be perfect for the movie he is about to start shooting he talks the director into filming the movie there so that he can meet Ellie in person. Can someone as famous as Graham really date an ordinary girl like Ellie, and why is Ellie so set on avoiding the spotlight with the new movie crew setting up in her hometown?

Last year I read The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith (Is that a mouth full or what??) and I enjoyed it so I was excited to see that she had a new contemporary stand alone book. It’s really nice to see a stand alone book for a change in a world full of trilogy, series and sagas one book that sums up the whole story is nice.

This story starts out in email form and we see the back and forth banter between the main characters and I must say that I fell in love with Graham from the very beginning. I mean he has a pet pig!! When they discuss the things that make them happy I thought it was beautiful. When we get further into the story you really start to learn more about Graham and he lives up to your expectations. He is a good guy looking for someone to love him for who he is inside rather then only seeing the movie star.

I must say that I loved the story and as I turned the last page I let out a nice contented sigh as should happen since I was completely satiated with the story. The one thing that I really loved about the book is that I felt it was realistic. It felt like it really could happen. People receive wrong emails all the time, but how many people would actually answer them back to let them know they had made a mistake.

This small rant may spoil a part of the book, so if you haven’t read it yet you might want to stop here. The one thing that frustrated me about the story is Ellie being irrational and wasting time. The movie was only being filmed in the small town for a month, and out of that time about 3 weeks go by where Ellie won’t talk and see Graham!! I hate things like serendipity where one thing happens to one person which keeps another person from finding out how that person feels (It’s hard to describe what I mean) I just wish that for more of the book the two main characters would have been getting along and getting to know each other more before they have the fight that separates them for so long.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book a lot. If you enjoyed this book and haven’t read The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight then you should check that one out. You might also like How Zoe Made her Dreams (Mostly) Come True by Sarah Strohmeyer and Meant to Be by Lauren Morrill.