Jennifer E. Smith

This Is What Happy Looks Like

Sarah Sammis

The set up reminds me of a modern day Daddy-Long-Legs with handwritten notes replaced with emails. But the emails are only part of the story. It's not a pure epistolary novel, though frankly it could easily have been as both characters shine best through their emails.

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chloe rae

I totally enjoyed this book. I picked it up because I saw someone give it AMAZING reviews and just thought, why not? I've been in a really weird book slump lately. I just don't know what exactly I'm in the mood for. I pick something up, it doesn't really catch my attention, and I move on. This however, held my attention. This is by no means the BEST BOOK EVER but it's light, fun, and adorable. I didn't get emotionally invested until about half way through, but once I did, I had to see how things ended. This book just made me so excited for summer and all the adventures that await. Warmer weather is right around the corner and I can't wait!

Maui Santos

I love the sense of reality in this book. The whole scenario of it, I believe can happen in real life. This book is romantic without being too mushy, it gives you a little tingly feeling that will leave you wanting more.

I really want a beagle now and name it Bagel.

Annika Arguemore

It's completely cliche but I loved it still. It's a very cute and light read, basically.

★★★ // she writes okay, but lacks any punch or oompf in terms of story-telling. they’re two completely different things.

Thais Souza Passos

SO SWEET, SO BEAUTIFUL, I'M SO IN LOVE <333333 JENNIFER E. SMITH, HAVE I TOLD YOU THAT I LOVE YOU AND YOUR BOOKS??!!

Cassidy

** spoiler alert **
           I loved Jennifer Smith's first book. However, this following novel was okay. I felt that though it had evidence proving that it had substance, this book was too predictable, combining two cliches - the typical summer romance, and the "I met this guy but didn't know he was famous and now I love him".

Meaghan Little 

Georgia Carr

This is just a really sweet summer book. I think it was all a little fast-paced at the beginning, and the whole thing with Ellie's father could've been explained more clearly for sure, but the two leads are likeable and well developed. Also, the ending was very sudden and a lot of things weren't explained. There's definitely room for a sequel, which I'd be more than happy to read.

For fans of John Green. A winning combination of humour, heartbreak and romance make this a must read. If fate sent you an email, would you answer? It's June - seventeen-year-old Ellie O'Neill's least favourite time of year. Her tiny hometown is annually invaded by tourists, and this year there's the added inconvenience of a film crew. Even the arrival of Hollywood heartthrob Graham Larkin can't lift her mood. But there is something making Ellie very happy. Ever since an email was accidentally sent to her a few months ago, she's been corresponding with a mysterious stranger, the two of them sharing their hopes and fears. Their developing relationship is not without its secrets though - there's the truth about Ellie's past... and her pen pal's real identity. When they finally meet in person, things are destined to get much more complicated. Can two people, worlds apart but brought together by chance, make it against all the odds? Spanning one fateful summer, Jennifer E. Smith's new novel proves that life - and love - are full of unexpected connections and happy mistakes.

This is what Happy Looks Like

petit-chocobo

ashley hopkins

laura

Such a cute summer read. I love the hollywood vibe meets summer beach town. I ALSO LOVE the email meet cute and the constant talk about the pets. I really enjoyed the romance and hope to read the follow up novel soon. I wish there would have been more emails to start the chapter or more emails that showed the start of their relationship but really cute.

Lisa Collins

adria

This was okay. Your typical contemporary romance. Relatable characters, predictable plot, pretty good writing.

Clara hash

Ava Shaffer

I enjoyed parts of this book, but I feel like the majority of it was very slow and boring. I liked the characters, but it did seem kind of typical.

Emily C Peterson

I read this book in one day. Not because I was so engrossed, but because I just wanted it to end. This book felt like rainbow rowell's attachments except not as well done or as deep.

b.andherbooks

Teen heart-throb actor Graham and small-town Maine girl Ellie "meet" and correspond for months via email after Graham mistyped the email of his pet pig baby-sitter. Dying to meet the mysterious "e," Graham convinces his current movie director to film in Ellie's town. It's love at first true meeting, but will a secret from Ellie's past keep them apart?

This was a cute and summery romance, good for the beach and fans of love at first sight. For me, this was a bit boring because the two mains have already fallen for each other when we meet them. The the only real drama is the will they or won't they make it due to Graham's stardom and Ellie's secret which she refuses to share with him.

Ella Dewars

I loved The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight. It was wonderful, and made Jennifer E. Smith one of my favorite authors almost immediately. So I of course made the sacrifice to buy a book in paperback (despite the ugly cover - yes, I know we shouldn't judge books by covers) just so I could get This is What Happy Looks Like two days after it came out.

It lived up to every single one of my expectations. And then some. This book left me grinning for days. It is way beyond cute and adorable and I just loved it. Can I please have a random stranger email me about his pig? It would also be great if he was a movie star, please and thank you's. Oh, and he can just come to my not-so-small, not-so-quaint, not-so-movie-worthy town, too. That would be awesome.


  The Good:

1. Let's start with the guy. (Because everyone knows that in an adorable romance book, the guy is a bit more than simply rather important.) Graham was famous, which was nice, and he was gorgeous, which was also nice, but most of all he was funny and cute and sweet and just generally worthy of a swoon (both looks and personality-wise). I just loved him. A lot. (sigh) Oh, and the fact that he had a pet pig made me happy. Not entirely sure why, but it did.

2. And then there was Ellie. She was wonderful, I loved her to bits, too. She was witty and slightly nerdy (and, yes, a bit of a cliche character - but I'll get to that later) and reminded me of me, although maybe just a bit more out of touch with the world. She seemed real, despite being a character in your (not-so) stereotypical teenage fluffy romance novel.

3. Speaking of fluffy romance novels, here's why I liked it. It was fluffy. And romantic. And really, really cute. and it satisfied my need for romance in my life which sadly lacks romance, but we don't talk about that too much This entire book = major adorable fluff that was majorly adorably and fluffy. And that's not always a bad thing. (It's Jennifer E. Smith, people! She can take anything and make it awesome!)

4. Wilbur the pig. No, he's not actually a character in the book but I liked him so there. Yes, he plays a minor role (heck, he barely has a role). But let's face it: he's a pet pig. The pet pig of a much-sought-after, much-swooned-over seventeen-year-old. He deserves his own little paragraph detailing his awesomeness.

5. The emails. I loved that the book wasn't told entirely through prose, the emails were a nice touch, especially at the beginning (where there were the most of them). They added an extra level of cute, and they gave another side of the story, sort of.


  The Bad:

1. Yes, it is cliche. Yes, when my friend picked this book up from my desk and read the flap, he looked at me, rolled his eyes, and said "This is quite possibly the biggest cliche ever." Yes, he was right (but he's also a boy - we need to account for that). I mean, let's face it. A vast majority of girls may dream about having a celebrity accidentally email them, start up a sorta-kinda-not-exactly romance, and then come to their town to film a movie and meet them, but it's never gonna happen. Never. That sort of thing simply doesn't happen in real life. However, that does not mean that this book was bad. Jennifer E. Smith can take anything that seems cliche and cheesy in every sense of the word, and turn it into something that will keep you grinning until you die.

2. There were parts of it that I felt were a little forced. (view spoiler)[Specifically, Ellie's dad and that little plotline, along with her friend who's name I cannot remember for the life of me and am too lazy to go look up. (hide spoiler)]

Overall, I loved this book. (I read it once, then read it again, the read half of it before deciding I should read other books.)

Well, it didn't break my heart. It did make me want more though. Such a sweet, happy book. :)

Hayley 📖🌈💜🌸

I really enjoyed this, it was super cute and lovey-dovey. It did take me a while to get into (the whole misunderstood celebrity thing irked me at first, but he was a nice guy, so I kind of got over that.)

Lisa ✩ @lifeinlit

Find this review and others like it at Lost in Literature!

Audiobook Review

3.5 stars!

I have to start out by saying how much I LOVED The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight. I probably loved it to the point that no other YA contemporary could ever surpass. So obviously I expected the same amount of awesomeness from Smith's next book. Though I did enjoy this, it did fall short for me.

This is What Happy Looks Like is flirty and fun. I liked the setting being a small town in Maine. The story line reminded me a lot of You've Got Mail with a YA contemporary twist. There were also parental issues that arose on Ellie's side as the story progressed, which put a different spin on the story as well.

Again, whether right or wrong, I kept comparing it to TSPoLaFS, which was basically perfect to me in every way. I loved the story, the little time stamps at the beginning of the chapters, and I adored the characters. In This is What Happy Looks Like, I had great difficulty connecting with the characters on any sort of level. I wasn't a huge fan of Ellie. Graham was cute, but almost too cute... to the point of being unrealistic. It's hard to believe any teenage actor would be that determined to find a girl he emailed by mistake one day, a girl he knew next to nothing about. They did get to know a lot about each other through these emails... but it still seemed a little far-fetched to me that he would then go to these lengths to meet her in person. I did enjoy the emails at the beginning of each chapter though. That was a nice little touch.

I chose the audio for this one. And I have to say, I absolutely loved Andrew Sweeney. He did a great job as Graham, and I didn't mind his female voices either. Marcie Millard, on the other hand, basically drove me crazy. She didn't perform this book at all... only read it, literally, word for word, enunciating every word perfectly. Some may not mind this, but it's my audio pet peeve. No one talks like that. They just don't. So for me, the way she enunciated every single word perfectly with zero emotion just made her so flat and hard to relate to. I'm assuming that may have been my biggest issue with connecting with Ellie. She just didn't feel real to me. Marcie is most likely a wonderful public speaker, but as a narrator she just didn't do it for me.

After saying all of that, I do think others will enjoy this book more than I did. Maybe it's not fair that I'm comparing it so much to TSPoLaFS. I just can't help it. And it's not that I didn't like this book... I just expected so much more, so I was a little disappointed I guess. I would still definitely recommend this book to YA contemp fans that are looking for a cute story.

This Is What Happy Looks Like

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