Release date: April 1, 2025
Publisher: Atria
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Synopsis:
A bestselling romance author flees to Alaska to reinvent herself and write her first murder mystery, but the rugged resort proprietor soon has her fearing she’s living in a rom-com plot instead in this earnestly spectacular debut by a stunning new voice.
Beloved romance author Margot Bradley has a dark secret: she doesn’t believe in Happily Ever Afters. Not for herself, not for her readers, and not even for her characters, for whom she secretly writes alternate endings that swap weddings and babies for divorce papers and the occasional slashed tire. When her Happily Never After document is hacked and released to the public, she finds herself canceled by her readers and dropped by her publisher.
Desperate to find a way to continue supporting her chronically ill sister, Savannah, Margot decides to trade meet-cutes for murder. The fictional kind. Probably. But when Savannah books Margot a six-week stay in a remote Alaskan resort to pen her first murder mystery, Margot finds herself running from a moose and leaping into the arms of the handsome proprietor, making her fear she’s just landed in a romance novel instead.
The last thing Dr. Forrest Wakefield ever expected was to leave his dream job as a cancer researcher to become a glorified bellhop. What he’s really doing at his family’s resort is caring for his stubborn, ailing father, and his puzzle-loving mind is slowly freezing over—until Margot shows up. But Forrest doesn’t have any room in his life for another person he could lose, especially one with a checkout date.
As long snowy nights and one unlikely trope after another draw Margot and Forrest together, they’ll each have to learn to overcome their fears and set their aside assumptions before Margot leaves—or risk becoming a Happily Never After story themselves.
Review:
This was soooo cute and I was floored when I saw it was a debut! Obviously you know by the title that this will play with different romance tropes and there’s basically every single one you can think of here but it was done in such a fun and cheeky manner! It took a pretty cliched series of tropes and put an original and funny spin on things that I just adored. If a romance has witty banter I’m pretty much sold and there was plenty of that goodness here. Besides the amazing romance between Margot and Forrest the relationships with the secondary characters were just as charming too. Margot’s bond with her sister was so special and Forrest’s relationship with his dad made me teary at times. Since she is a romance author this was one big love letter to romancelandia and I thought that was such a cute addition. Loved this one clearly and can’t wait to see what the author comes up with next!
Overall rating: 5/5
Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.
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