Just Finished Reading … This is What Happy Looks Like

This Is What Happy Looks Like
by Jennifer E. Smith
To be published by Poppy
on April 2, 2013

Source: e-ARC via Netgalley. My full FTC disclosure is on the right sidebar.

Buzzwords: chick lit, summer romance, meeting cute, pigs as pets, whoopie pies

Connect with the author: Twitter : website.

Summary from Goodreads: When teenage movie star Graham Larkin accidentally sends small town girl Ellie O'Neill an email about his pet pig, the two seventeen-year-olds strike up a witty and unforgettable correspondence, discussing everything under the sun, except for their names or backgrounds. Then Graham finds out that Ellie's Maine hometown is the perfect location for his latest film, and he decides to take their relationship from online to in-person. But can a star as famous as Graham really start a relationship with an ordinary girl like Ellie? And why does Ellie want to avoid the media's spotlight at all costs? 

My take: This Is What Happy Looks Like is a book that reminded me…. hang on just a second. I have an idea.

Do you speak fluent Chick Flick?  Then I can explain this book to you in ten seconds.

This Is What Happy Looks Like is a YA mash-up of:

Notting Hill -- ordinary person who finds love with a famous actor
What A Girl Wants -- character who isn't close to his/her biological father
You've Got Mail -- two unlikely people meet cute through email, never exchanging their real names

Like a chick flick, This Is What Happy Looks Like is a charming, feel-good story that requires a bit of suspension of disbelief. First, the statistical probability that two teenagers would email each other over an extended period of time without also Googling, Facebooking, Skyping or Instagramming the other is …. almost zero. The idea that a seventeen-year-old male movie star would be interested in a ordinary girl who loves poetry and scoops ice cream over the summer as more than just a fling is also somewhat unlikely.

If you can get past that (and I could!) This Is What Happy Looks Like is a fun, heart-warming story. I didn't love it quite as much as The Statistical Probability of Love At First Sight, which I thought had more of a necessary dark side to contrast with all the cute. But This Is What Happy Looks Like did a lot that made me … happy. 

I liked the fact that This Is What Happy Looks Like used a dual POV, alternating chapters from Ellie and Graham's viewpoint. The setting -- a coastal Maine town in which tourist and locals uncomfortably co-exist over the summer -- felt so realistic that I could feel the sand between my toes and smell the sea air. I liked the relationship between Ellie and her friend Quinn, which strained over the fact that Ellie didn't ever tell her friend about the mysterious guy she was emailing. There are some minor subplots -- about a pig and whoopee pies -- that added a nice dose of quirk to the mix.

While Ellie -- with her ice cream store job and her love of poetry -- felt realistic to me, I can't say the same of Graham. I wasn't completely buying the fact that he was already weary of fame at seventeen, especially since he'd only been discovered two years earlier in a high school production of Guys and Dolls. If he'd been a child star or had crazy stage parents, I might have bought the fact that he was tired of being famous. Same goes for Ellie's Big Secret. I don't want to spoil it, but again, in the age of Google and the dirt-digging media, the whole thing didn't add up for me.

But such is the burden of the romantic. To enjoy chick flicks and books about true love at seventeen, you must suspend disbelief. Does a Jake ever really fall for a Samantha in high school? Can Bridget Jones really land a gorgeous and successful barrister using nothing but wacky mishaps and adorable squinting? In order to fend off existential despair, we must believe these things to be true.

I'd recommend This Is What Happy Looks Like to fans of romantic comedy and to readers of contemporary YA who like their books sweet and light, like a scoop of sherbet on a hot summer day.