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s_kasko 's review for:
This Is What Happy Looks Like
by Jennifer E. Smith
This Is What Happy Looks Like is everything I love about YA romance. It's sweet and a little goofy, the kind of book that makes you laugh and swoon. Henley makes for the perfect setting for a seaside romance, with just enough quirky characters/places/traditions to bring it to life, and the addition of a movie crew filming there gives it an added dimension. Plus, it employs one of my all time favorite tropes, where characters meet accidentally over the internet and strike up a friendship.
Graham is the perfect YA romance hero, the famous movie star with a soft center. He's soft and goofy and sweet and there's an openness to him that's really interesting to see in a YA lead. His individual arc about loneliness--about losing himself to this movie star version of him--is compelling and fits nicely into the overall tapestry of the story.
Ellie is similarly great, the small town girl with big dreams. I love that she has some level of awareness of the tropes she's playing with (something the book as a whole is really good about) and that her "lead-girl reservedness" has a legitimate reasoning behind it.
It's a very sweet book with just enough depth to keep it from becoming saccharine and enough interesting side threads to make it linger in the back of your mind without ever losing sight of the fact that it's a romance first and foremost. And it's absolutely the kind of story that you can keep getting lost in over and over, letting the waves of Henley draw you in.
4/5
Graham is the perfect YA romance hero, the famous movie star with a soft center. He's soft and goofy and sweet and there's an openness to him that's really interesting to see in a YA lead. His individual arc about loneliness--about losing himself to this movie star version of him--is compelling and fits nicely into the overall tapestry of the story.
Ellie is similarly great, the small town girl with big dreams. I love that she has some level of awareness of the tropes she's playing with (something the book as a whole is really good about) and that her "lead-girl reservedness" has a legitimate reasoning behind it.
It's a very sweet book with just enough depth to keep it from becoming saccharine and enough interesting side threads to make it linger in the back of your mind without ever losing sight of the fact that it's a romance first and foremost. And it's absolutely the kind of story that you can keep getting lost in over and over, letting the waves of Henley draw you in.
4/5