Review of 'Happily Ever After' by Harriet Evans

I have been wondering what to put up on Wednesday's for a while now - as my sister is right - you cannot really know what a lyric should be without the music. So I will endeavour to post something a bit different every week. From reviews to perhaps some chapters of my own writing. After I post reviews it'd be nice if others could read the same book and tell me if it affected them in the same way  it affected me. I'd love to know.

Here's the first review. Hope you like it and it inspires you to read:

“ ‘It feels like a race. Like everyone else is on the tracks, and I’m at the wrong venue with the wrong shoes on.’ ”

This quote sums up Happily Ever After by Harriet Evans. This quote especially resonates with girls, who might believe that it is a race. To consolidate the truth: it is not a race. Everybody has their own pace. Publisher – HarperCollins

The Blurb reads:

‘You can’t escape the ties that bind – the past catches up with you no matter how far you try to run…

This is a story of a girl who doesn’t believe in happy endings. Or happy families. It’s the story of Eleanor Bee, a shy book-loving girl who vows to turn herself into someone bright, shiny and confident, someone sophisticated. Someone who knows how life works.

But life has a funny way of catching us unawares. Turns out that Elle doesn’t know everything about love. Or life. Or how to keep the ones we love safe…

Absorbing, poignant and unforgettable, Happily Ever After is a compelling story of a fractured family and a girl who doesn’t believe in love.'

I thought she left too bigger gap between the chapters, but she always filled in the parts we needed to know, at the right time. The jigsaw pieces of her life all make sense by the end. We watch (or read) her grow up and change location because of popularity, but eventually she returns  to her orginal location because she learns that she needs to be happy, not just Ok.

 The love story is keeps us on tenterhooks right up until the Epilogue. Happily Ever After really takes you on a journey of a life that can be universalised. We all go through feeling some form of what she does throughout the book, I definitely found myself nodding along with some of her theories and practicalities of life.

One quotation in particular struck me: “ ‘You’re a star. You’re wonderful. You just don’t realise it.’ ” I think we’re all guilty of that one. Sometimes it’s just nice to hear, but you have to believe it of yourself. Even when no one else does. You’re making your way as best you can, in this world which is constantly telling us we’re not good enough. It’s time to stand up and tell the world that you are now. That is the point this book is trying to impress on us, and I think it works.

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Steph

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