What’s it all about?:
If the shoe fits, wear it.
If it doesn’t, make it.
Laure is a teenage street urchin just trying to get away. Where the rest of the world sees an enchanting love story, Laure sees royal incompetence and an opportunity to exploit it. She’ll have wealth and a way out of a life she detests, if she can only manage to hoodwink the royal family and survive to tell the tale.
SYNOPSIS FROM GOODREADS
What did I think?:
First of all, thank you so much to the author, Chauncey Rogers for getting in touch via email and asking me if I’d like to read a copy of Happily in exchange for an honest review. I’ve been very selective recently about the books I accept, as some of you might know I have an enormous backlog/TBR and I’m trying to only say “yes” to those novels that I’m genuinely excited about. Apologies as well to Chauncey for getting this review out so late, I’m afraid that life kind of got in the way as it tends to do! Anyway, why was I initially so excited about Happily? Well, as a huge fan of fairy-tale retellings, Happily is an alternate version of that classic fairy tale, Cinderella so getting round to reading this was kind of a no brainer – it HAD to happen. The actual experience of reading it was thoroughly enjoyable, I adored the main characters, particularly our female lead, Laure and the plot itself was so compelling that I whizzed through it in merely a couple of hours on an otherwise very dull long haul flight!
Chauncey Rogers, author of the YA novel, Happily.
What can I say that hasn’t already been said in that short but remarkably adequate synopsis above? This is the story of Laure, independent and a little bit wild, who survives on her wits and from stealing what she needs from market stalls. She lives her life day by day, perfectly happy in her own company but haunted by an event in her past which has led her to be isolated and very distrustful of others. This is until one of her jaunts to the market leads to a meeting with a young man called Luc which in turn, leads to her being very much in his debt. Ever the chameleon, Laure ends up convincing Luc to join her in the ultimate heist to fool the royal family which involves, you guessed it, becoming the girl who the glass slipper fits and marrying the prince.
Disney’s Cinderella – the image which some of us may connect to this story.
So as you might have guessed by now, Happily is ever so slightly different from the original fairy-tale of Cinderella! Obviously, it does have something in common – a poor girl in search of a better life and the hunt for a mysterious woman at a ball who left behind a glass slipper as the only means of identifying her. That’s pretty much where the similarity ends however there are a few other themes that run in parallel that I can’t really talk about for fear of spoiling Chauncey’s brilliant story. The massive, glaring difference here is that our heroine, Laure was never at the ball in the first place, she is a street urchin and thief with a sassy, fiery personality and she doesn’t take any nonsense whatsoever! She strikes up an endearing relationship with Luc where they butt heads considerably during their adventures but grow to develop a deep admiration and respect for one another by what they go through together.
I adored both Laure and Luc individually and as a couple, they were both relatable personalities that readers could empathise with and despite each of their own hardships, they both had hearts of gold and would never intentionally hurt anyone else. I was especially enamoured with Laure – what a fantastic, hot-headed and brave girl she was! I was fascinated by her attitude to life and was constantly intrigued to discover what had happened in her life to make her heart so seemingly impenetrable at the beginning of the story. As a piece of young adult fiction, I would recommend this story to anyone who enjoys the genre, fairy tale re-tellings with a difference and dynamic, very readable characters.
Would I recommend it?:
But of course!
Star rating (out of 5):
