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A review by maggiemaggio
This Is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith
2.0
1.5 stars
Fair warning: I really hated this book and there is going to be nothing positive in this review.
I read The Statistical Probability of Love At First Sight (my review) last year and thought it was good, a solid 3 stars in my opinion. But This Is What Happy Looks Like? I'm having a very hard time not giving it 1 star.
This book is written in the third person, which isn't my favorite, but most of the time it doesn't bother me (at first I thought maybe I don't normally read books in the third person so I've paid attention to what I've read since I read this and I've read a bunch of third person stories that didn't bother me). But in this book it drove me crazy. Not only is it third person, but it's two-third-person perspectives which made it much worse. And it's not third person omniscient it's a very close third-person focusing on each main character in alternating chapters. I feel like the names "Ellie" and "Graham" were used 10,000 times in this book. Not only was this written in the third person, it was also very lyrically written, which is a style that just isn't for me.
I realize a lot of people probably like this aspect, but this book was just too earnest for me. The characters are all good kids, there's no rebelling, they're polite and nice, there's no cursing, there's no sex, and there's barely even kissing. I'm not saying a book has to have any of that for me to find it appealing, but here it just came off as completely contrived.
Also, nothing happens in the book. There's no real problem to solve or thing to get over. It's like there could have been, but nothing was every taken far enough or fleshed out enough to be life changing.
The entire time I was reading this I just kept thinking how this was just a rip-off of Tammara Webber's Between the Lines series, most specifically the third book, Good For You. There are differences, Good For You is a heck of a lot less earnest, but the similarities were just too great for me to ignore. Graham is even the name of one of the main characters in the Between the Lines series.
What it comes down to is that I had zero desire to keep reading this book. I honestly don't know why I finished. I could have stopped 100 pages in, I could have stopped 300 pages in, or I could have stopped 10 pages before the end. That's how little I cared about the story or the characters.
Bottom Line: Most of the time when I don't like a book I can say it just wasn't for me, but people who like X, Y, and Z might enjoy it. In this case I just don't know who this is for. If you like books that are written in extremely awkward third person perspective and books where nothing happens, then I suggest you check this out. If that doesn't appeal to you I highly recommend checking out the Between the Lines series if you want a story about teenager actors and normal teens.
Fair warning: I really hated this book and there is going to be nothing positive in this review.
I read The Statistical Probability of Love At First Sight (my review) last year and thought it was good, a solid 3 stars in my opinion. But This Is What Happy Looks Like? I'm having a very hard time not giving it 1 star.
This book is written in the third person, which isn't my favorite, but most of the time it doesn't bother me (at first I thought maybe I don't normally read books in the third person so I've paid attention to what I've read since I read this and I've read a bunch of third person stories that didn't bother me). But in this book it drove me crazy. Not only is it third person, but it's two-third-person perspectives which made it much worse. And it's not third person omniscient it's a very close third-person focusing on each main character in alternating chapters. I feel like the names "Ellie" and "Graham" were used 10,000 times in this book. Not only was this written in the third person, it was also very lyrically written, which is a style that just isn't for me.
I realize a lot of people probably like this aspect, but this book was just too earnest for me. The characters are all good kids, there's no rebelling, they're polite and nice, there's no cursing, there's no sex, and there's barely even kissing. I'm not saying a book has to have any of that for me to find it appealing, but here it just came off as completely contrived.
Also, nothing happens in the book. There's no real problem to solve or thing to get over. It's like there could have been, but nothing was every taken far enough or fleshed out enough to be life changing.
The entire time I was reading this I just kept thinking how this was just a rip-off of Tammara Webber's Between the Lines series, most specifically the third book, Good For You. There are differences, Good For You is a heck of a lot less earnest, but the similarities were just too great for me to ignore. Graham is even the name of one of the main characters in the Between the Lines series.
What it comes down to is that I had zero desire to keep reading this book. I honestly don't know why I finished. I could have stopped 100 pages in, I could have stopped 300 pages in, or I could have stopped 10 pages before the end. That's how little I cared about the story or the characters.
Bottom Line: Most of the time when I don't like a book I can say it just wasn't for me, but people who like X, Y, and Z might enjoy it. In this case I just don't know who this is for. If you like books that are written in extremely awkward third person perspective and books where nothing happens, then I suggest you check this out. If that doesn't appeal to you I highly recommend checking out the Between the Lines series if you want a story about teenager actors and normal teens.