Happily Ever Afters // Review

Author: Elise Bryant
Published On: January 5th, 2021
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Genre: YA, Contemporary
Add to Goodreads

Sixteen-year-old Tessa Johnson has never felt like the protagonist in her own life. She’s rarely seen herself reflected in the pages of the romance novels she loves. The only place she’s a true leading lady is in her own writing—in the swoony love stories she shares only with Caroline, her best friend and #1 devoted reader.

When Tessa is accepted into the creative writing program of a prestigious art school, she’s excited to finally let her stories shine. But when she goes to her first workshop, the words are just…gone. Fortunately, Caroline has a solution: Tessa just needs to find some inspiration in a real-life love story of her own. And she’s ready with a list of romance novel-inspired steps to a happily ever after. Nico, the brooding artist who looks like he walked out of one of Tessa’s stories, is cast as the perfect Prince Charming.

But as Tessa checks off each item off Caroline’s list, she gets further and further away from herself. She risks losing everything she cares about—including the surprising bond she develops with sweet Sam, who lives across the street. She’s well on her way to having her own real-life love story, but is it the one she wants, after all?

Man oh man, was this a disappointment.

I’m genuinely so sad that I didn’t like this because it had so much potential! The synopsis of this makes it seem right up my alley, and in all fairness, I actually enjoy some aspects. However, as I read, I found myself getting more and more frustrated with this book.

I usually love to spill the tea on things that I disliked, but this one made me sad to write because of how much I wanted to love it. If you’re a sucker for negative reviews (not too negative because I’m ~soft~), buckle up, because I gotchu here.

• The representation! I loved how this book centered a Black teenage girl and discussed how she often felt left out of the love stories she enjoys reading so much. There are multiple conversations about race and identity in media, and I enjoyed reading these parts and hearing Bryant’s insight! Tessa’s father is Black, and her best friend is Filipina. Tessa’s brother also has Athetoid cerebral palsy, and we get to see how this condition affects Tessa and her family and how above all else, she loves and adores her brother.

• The school system! And the culinary arts program! Tessa ends up attending Chrysalis, a school for talented artists. It kind of gave me a ~Victorious~ vibe, with everyone just hanging out and doing what they love! Would definitely like to see more stories with these kinds of specialized schools in the future, because I find them super interesting!

• Tessa…definitely acts her age. She makes a lot of mistakes and bad decisions, but hey, so do many teenagers!

• Sweet baker-boy-next-door Sam. Sam was honestly so pure and way, way too good for anyone else in this book. We love boys who can bake!

Oh jeez, where to begin?

• I couldn’t stand Tessa. She was so, so self-absorbed. She has a long-distance best friend named Caroline, who she constantly exploits for advice and support without giving anything in return. She’s a brat to her parents (though her mom does have her own questionable moments), and fully takes advantage of sweet Sam. She’s the queen of self-sabotaging and is super judgemental – she judged Sam as a dork the second she met him because he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and dubbed Poppy (see below) as a mean girl because she was hanging out with three boys and had dyed hair. Just all around not into the judgement.

• The icky, gray-zone cheating plot-line. Long story short, after deciding that she needs to create one of her romance-inspired love stories to get her writing groove back, she sets her sights on Nico, a popular boy at her new school. However, Nico has a girlfriend, Poppy. Bryant writes Poppy as a traditional “mean girl” to justify Tessa’s resolve to steal Nico away for herself, which was just…not cool. I’m so sick of this “I want him so I’ll just make his girlfriend a bitch” trope. Girls Supporting Girls 2021!

• How did Tessa get into a creative writing program without expecting that she was going to have to…I don’t know, share her work? Come on. She’s incredibly insecure – which okay, at 16 I was too – but to the point where she’s about to fail out of her class because she’s so terrified to read her own work. I understand that she’s got anxiety, but there were so many better ways to solve that problem than to -literally- run away from class to avoid your turn at reading aloud. Especially after the professor offered to personally help her overcome her nerves?! Ugh, c’mon, girl. As my own mother would say, put on your big girl panties and deal with it.

• The last 1/3 of this felt so…inconsistent? Parts dragged when I wanted them to speed up, other parts flew by without adding any real substance to the story. And even after all that, we ended on…a cliffhanger, ish? It was a super unsatisfying conclusion.
  
• Way too many Harry Potter references. For a book that was published after all of JKR’s recent bulls*it, I find this kind of inexcusable. Be warned.

All in all, this one was not for me. However, it’s gotten amazing reviews on Goodreads, so maybe it will be for you! I will admit that I did have fun writing snarky notes on post-it’s to stick throughout the book – though that was probably the biggest source of enjoyment I got from this read.

My rating:

Have you read Happily Ever Afters? Did you like it?