When I first heard about this book, I was quite taken with the idea that it had a focus on fairytale romances but with a twist. Just the line on the front makes me smile “One damsel. Many many frogs.”! I do enjoy a romcom whether it’s a book or a film so I was really looking forward to reading this one and I’m happy to share my review today.
About the Book
Gloriously fun, romantic and feel-good, discover a 21st century London fairytale with an unforgettable twist . . .
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
Not That Kind of Ever After has one of the most memorable opening lines I’ve read for a while. I’m saying no more – you’ll have to see for yourself! Not That Kind of Ever after certainly produced plenty of funny lines and lived up to the comedy part of the ‘romcom’ title 😄
It also lived up to the romance half of ‘romcom’ as we follow Bella looking for her fairytale ending, in perhaps a rather unconventional way. There are lots of fairytale references, particularly relating to Bella’s, well shall we describe them as adventures? She certainly kisses a lot of frogs and it made me very glad that I don’t have to navigate modern dating. There have been comparisons to Bridget Jones and I can certainly see see similarities. Like Bridget, Bella desperately wants to find her Mr Right and as with Bridget, you’ll be both laughing and cringing as she goes about her search.
As well as finding love, one of Bella’s ambitions is to be a writer. Her best friend Ellie’s brother, Marty, suggests she writes about her experiences, like a twisted modern fairytale, in a online forum where a chapter at a time is released. Slowly her work starts to gets more attention and build up a following which actually puts some pressure on her to come up with the next chapter. Of course, no-one knows that it’s not strictly fiction…
In some ways, Bella seemed quite immature. Her reaction to the news of her parents’ divorce was to storm off to her room. When her best friend gets engaged and moves in with her fiancé, Bella is ragingly jealous that she’s not the most important person in Ellie’s life anymore. Her responses seems very childish. Thankfully, we then see her character develop over the course of the novel and she becomes much more rational and balanced.
Was her Prince Charming closer than she thought? Does she get her happy ever after? Well, you’ll need to read for yourself to find out.
My thanks to Hannah Hargrave for sending me a copy of the book for review.
Not That Kind of Ever After will be published by Piatkus on 16th February.
About the Author
Leaving LAMDA for Leeds and graduating with a first class degree in Maths, Luci spent her early career torn between creativity and logic until she realised it’s possible to do both.
She started out life in the tax world before swiftly seeing the light. She has since worked copywriting social posts for Apple Music, assisting with Amazon and BBC productions at Working Title Television and now works as an analyst at the Guardian by day whilst writing tales of heartbreak, adventure and truly terrible dates by night.
She lives in leafy St Albans and when she’s not writing, she spends her time drawing, baking and exploring the countryside with her little puppy.
Portobello Book Blog 