Title: This Is What Happy Looks LikeAuthor: Jennifer E. SmithEdition: hardcoverSeries: noneReleased Date: April 2nd, 2013Publisher: Poppy
Goodreads / Amazon If fate sent you an email, would you answer?
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?
When a misspelled e-mail gets Ellie and movie-star Graham Larkin talking, the two create a friendship that's indescribable. The two genuinely like each other, even though Ellie doesn't know of Graham's star status. When Graham's filming for his movie allows him to go where Ellie lives, Graham takes the chance to finally meet her and start something true.
I hadn't read The Statistical Probability of Love by Jennifer E. Smith, but after reading this, I know I have to. This book was simply fantastic. I could relate to all the characters, I loved the writing style, and I loved the plot as a whole. There were so many positive things about this novel that I can't wait to start this review.
First of all, there's Ellie. She's a red-head who lives in a small town. Her father is a senator who no longer considers her his child. Instead of living the posh life of being a senator's daughter, she had to struggle financially along with her mother. I found it really easy to relate with Ellie. I didn't have the same family situation, but how she looked at everything in life was very similar to how I do. She's very stubborn - there's no doubt about that. When she believes in something, she will believe in it until someone finds a way to change her mind. Her stubbornness wasn't annoying or obnoxious though. It was just a part of Ellie. Her hesitance towards some things with Graham, and her recklessness towards things with her father, evened out each other as well. For example, when she found out Graham was a movie star, she was a bit reluctant to continue talking to him. When she found out her father was nearby for a press release, she immediately wanted to go and talk to him. Ellie is simply human, and she doesn't seem robotic at all. She seems like any other girl that you would find down the street.
Graham, on the other hand, had some oddities to him. He was a movie star, but instead of being all happy about it, Graham had some doubts. He didn't like that people told him who he had to date, or the fact that he was just thrown into the life of fame. The worst thing for him was that he never got to see his parents, and his parents didn't really even care for him anymore. This struck a nerve in me, because all kids want to get away and leave their parents home. In the end, most teenagers cave and want to talk or be comforted by their parents. Graham's parent's were too afraid to treat this big-time movie star as their young boy anymore. Additionally, Graham didn't have much of a cocky bone in his body. You expect some movie stars to be kind of proud of themselves and their work...right? Of course Graham was proud, but he didn't flaunt it to the world. He didn't use his movie star status to get people to do what he wanted. You go, Graham Lankin.
There were a lot of minor characters that I liked reading about. All the relationships with the main characters and the minor characters were well thought out. For example, Ellie and her mom had a usual mom-and-daughter relationship. It was realistic, for sure. Same goes with Ellie and her best friend Quinn. Sometimes they fight, but they know they are best friends, and they have to talk things through to be better again. Graham had a lot of relationships with movie star people, so it was hard to distinguish those relationships as realistic because movie stars are just ehhh.
My other favorite part was definitely the e-mailing back and forth. That definitely caught my attention. I loved how some of the chapter headings were back-and-forth e-mails between Ellie and Graham! It made it super cute, and I absolutely loved it!
The one thing I disliked... the ending. You know that some books leave more of an open ending and you can tell the two got together without saying it, or it's a closed ending where the two got together previously in the book and then everything was all good? Well This Is What Happy Looks Like definitely had an open ending, but it didn't really work for this situation. It was kind of assumed that they got together, but with Graham traveling for movies and everything, it was hard to believe they actually did stay together. I just wish the ending would have been formulated a little better.
