Audiobook Review: This is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith

Title: This is What Happy Looks Like
Author: Jennifer E. Smith
Narrators: Andrew Sweeney, Marcie Millard
Published: April 2, 2013
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Length: 8 hrs 37 mins
Source: Purchased
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

If fate sent you an email, would you answer?

When teenage movie star Graham Larkin accidentally sends small town girl Ellie O'Neill an email about his pet pig, the two seventeen-year-olds strike up a witty and unforgettable correspondence, discussing everything under the sun, except for their names or backgrounds.

Then Graham finds out that Ellie's Maine hometown is the perfect location for his latest film, and he decides to take their relationship from online to in-person. But can a star as famous as Graham really start a relationship with an ordinary girl like Ellie? And why does Ellie want to avoid the media's spotlight at all costs?

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.

Jennifer E. Smith is the author of The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, The Storm Makers, You Are Here, and The Comeback Season. She earned her master's degree in creative writing from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and currently works as an editor in New York City. Her writing has been translated into 28 languages.

Website | Twitter | Facebook