A review by earlgaytea711
Happy Endings by Thien-Kim Lam

funny inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 Let me start off by saying I absolutely LOVE the premise of this story. A Vietnamese woman seeking her own way in the world and trying to help women with sex positivity and education is absolutely amazing! A second chance with a man who seems to have learned and grown! I do have a few issues though keeping this from being a full 5 star read.

Let’s start with the good! I really enjoyed the writing style. It was fun and just descriptive enough to give me a clear picture without feeling like I was reading pages of description. I loved how real Trixie and Andre felt. Both of them were complex and showed a range of emotion.

I also really enjoyed how the book was able to showcase so many different cultures. Each character had a fully realized background that informed their decisions. I do think this hindered fleshing them out as characters a little bit since some characters all we know about them really is their cultural background rather than personality traits.

I enjoyed the small business aspect of it all too. It was so fun getting to see all these characters with their own businesses and their own way of going about these businesses. Each business was unique and I think fit the character.

Andre and Trixie’s relationship was mixed for me. I do like them together! But I had a hard time with them constantly falling into sex together. I felt like in the relationship they’d say one thing to each other or to themselves and then do the opposite. It never felt organic. This might be because I tend to not read second chance romances. I have a very hard line of NO for all my exes so take this complaint with a grain of salt. 

Onto other things that gave me pause. I thought the side characters, all of them, needed to be fleshed out. I understand this is a romance so obviously the focus is on the main couple but the friendships while cute never felt real. The side characters weren’t fleshed out enough for me. For instance, from the beginning of the book we see Trixie talk about how close she and Keisha are but as a reader you barely get to see them interact. 

That leads to my other issue, there was so much telling. Even the epilogue would have been better if we’d seen how they got there. Mild spoiler ahead I suppose, you’ve been warned. I’ve never understood a romance novel ending when they are officially together instead of when the plot wraps up but it felt like the plot lines for both the main characters were wrapped up in a tell all epilogue. It would have been more satisfying to see how they got to the epilogue in my opinion.

Overall, despite my gripes, I enjoyed this one. I’m excited to read more from Thien-Kim Lam as this is her debut novel. Happy Endings releases May 18, 2021!