By Opal Frazier Johnson ‘28

Happily Never After

By Lynn Painter

Thursday, February 12 – Saturday, February 21

Rating: 4/5⭐

Images courtesy of Barnes & Noble and Audible

How did I find this book?

I’ve read several other books by Lynn Painter, like Better Than the Movies and Fake Skating. I thought that she only wrote Young Adult Romances, but this book was my entrance into her Adult Romance works. For the past few weeks, I have been in a reading slump, so I picked this book up as a light read to help me get out of the slump. Thankfully, it ended up being the perfect, cute, and funny book to get me back into reading consistently.

Summary & Overall Thoughts (Spoiler-Free!)

Happily Never After is about Max and Sophie, who work together as professional wedding objectors after Max is paid to break up Sophie’s wedding with her cheating fiancé. The two start as friends, but as they scheme to pretend to date to avoid the matchmaking of their friends and families, they get closer and eventually fall in love.

Happily Never After was the first Adult Romance by Lynn Painter that I have read. Although it still had the charm and humor that I liked about her Young Adult books, I noticed that, unlike her YA works, this story had very little underlying emotional issues that the characters had to work through alongside the romance. For example, in Better Than the Movies, Liz has to grapple with the death of her mother as she falls in love with Wes. 

This book did not have that same emotional quality that I’ve noticed in Painter’s YA books, but it didn’t bother me that much or affect my enjoyment of the book. The classic “third-act breakup” trope in romance books wasn’t very drawn-out or heated, and the characters were reconnected very quickly and with little conflict. That being said, the book is much shorter than some of her others (about 250 pages), so some of the emotions and conflict had to be shortened.

Overall, this book was perfect as a light, cute romance book with very low stakes. I really enjoyed it, and it was a great book to get out of a reading slump.

Characters:

The main characters of this book are Sophie and Max, and I really enjoyed reading their dynamic, especially the dialogue between them. For a book without much emotion or stakes, Lynn Painter does a great job at making the reader care about and root for the characters. 

Like most romance books, there is a lot of banter between the two main characters, and like always, Painter did not disappoint. I always recommend her books because of their dialogue and character development, and this book would also fall into that category of recommendations.

Content Warnings:

• Swearing
• Sexual Content

Spice Rating: 3/5 (A few explicit spicy scenes and many mentions of them throughout the book)