Happily Ever After

#5 on the What's In a Name Challenge for this year is to read a book with an emotion in the title.  I looked through my shelves and pulled down Happily Ever After by Harriet Evans to meet this category.  

When I picked up Happily Ever After, I thought it would be just a book full of fluff- a fun "beach" type read. In a lot of ways I was right, but there was also more to this one. We start out in London with Eleanor Bee fresh out of college, living on a friends couch and searching for a job in publishing. She finds a position at tiny BlueBird Books that is antiquated and has been around for ages. A perfect place to begin. Elle is young and a mess. She wears too short of skirts, rumpled usually, spills coffee on her boss, loses a prawn sandwich in a file drawer, and many other calamaties. Life has thrown the Bee family a few curves. When Elle and her brother were young pre-teens, their parents who fought constantly divorced. Their mother drinks too much, their father moved on right away, marrying a young lady and quickly having two new children, replacing his older kids. Elle and her brother don't get along, he's kind of a pig, and she rarely see's her father. Her mother has quit drinking and, after all these years, has a boyfriend. Elle's brother doesn't think mom has quit drinking, only that she's hiding it well, and if she has a boyfriend, why has no one ever met him? Fast forward a few years. Elle has taken a job share for a few months to a publisher in New York City. While there, she charms an older writer and quickly becomes a rising star. Her job share turns permanent and she is in love with New York. A wedding brings her back to London to face the old Elle and her old life, with some hard decisions to go along with it. 

I really liked Elle. Even though she didn't know it, she was a strong young woman, especially once she learned to stand up for herself. This was really a good story that I completely enjoyed!