Not That Kind of Ever After by Luci Adams: Book Review

Not That Kind of Ever After is the story of a woman and aspiring writer on a quest to find her happily ever after.

Acknowledgments:

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Netgalley for the ARC of this audiobook. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.

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From The Publisher:

Bella Marble is a true, hopeless, despairing romantic. Above all things, even above her wish to be a writer, she wants love. But when her beautiful best friend moves out of their flat share to live with the most boring ogre in history, and her perfectly paired parents tell her their own love story is coming to an end, Bella’s illusions of a happily ever after start to shatter. If they can’t find ‘the one’, what chance does she have? 

Disenchanted, Bella throws herself into looking for love in all the wrong places. London may be fresh out of knights in shining Armani, but it’s got a surplus of frogs – and as Bella learns, kissing frogs can be extremely fun. But Bella is forgetting the essential rule of all fairytales. There is nothing more powerful than a first kiss . . .

My Thoughts:

This was a fun take on a woman’s journey to find her happily ever after. I enjoyed the fact that Bella was an author who saw the world through rose-coloured glasses. Raised by parents who had their own meet-cute and fairy tale romance, Bella was destined to find her own.

After her roommate and lifelong best friend announced she is moving in with her boyfriend, Bella is devastated. She decides to write the book she has been trying to write for years with a slightly different spin. She’s going to write about her intimate encounters with one-night stands based on fairy tales. After all, she’s already hooked up with a hairy man she refers to as a wolf.

She posts a chapter at a time on a website for beta readers and a few men and chapters later her posts become extremely popular. But as time passes, she begins to learn more about herself and what she values most.

While this was an entertaining read, one of the critical elements for me is to like the protagonist. Generally speaking, I did. But there are many moments that I found Bella to be immature, irresponsible and even unfriendly. Happily, I began to see Bella evolve into a woman who becomes a little less self-centred in the latter parts of the book.

Josie Charles narrated the audiobook of Not That Kind of Ever After and gives an excellent performance. I enjoyed her youthful, expressive and articulate presentation. I encourage those readers who enjoy audiobooks to choose this format of this book.

What I Liked:

• The friends that stood by Bella during this journey
• The take off on several fairy tales
• The personal growth of Bella by the end of the book

Similar Books I’ve Reviewed:

On a Night Like This by Lindsey Kelk

If The Shoe Fits by Julie Murphy