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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.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 1, 2025 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781668079287
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781668079287
- File size: 3534 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from January 1, 2025
DEBUT Margot Bradley is a popular romance novelist with a devoted following and a secret: she doesn't actually believe in happily-ever-afters, even as she writes them for her beloved characters. After a failed engagement, she starts writing alternate, unhappy endings for her novels in a secret "Happily Never After" file. When the Happily Never After file is leaked during a livestream, Margot is in hot water and flees to a remote Alaskan lodge for six weeks to take a stab at switching genres by writing a romance-free murder mystery. There she meets Dr. Forrest Wakefield, who has recently moved back home from California to take care of his father, the ailing proprietor of the lodge. As Margot and Forrest slowly bond, they keep finding themselves in the middle of every single kind of romance-novel trope, of the sort Margot claims not to believe in. Fate seems to be pushing them together, but the question remains: can they overcome their fears about relationships before Margot leaves Alaska? VERDICT Lavine turns many of the common romance novel tropes on their heads in this stunning debut. Top-notch banter will have readers laughing out loud as they root for Margot to finally achieve her own happily-ever-after.--Whitney Kramer
Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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April 15, 2025
In Alaska to escape her angry fans and write a murder mystery, a popular romance author finds the one thing she never expected: a chance for her own Happily Ever After. Margot Bradley is known for her swoony love stories, but she doesn't actually believe in true love; she secretly writes different, bitter endings for her characters, which she keeps in a document titled Happily Never After. When her computer is hacked and the file is released to the public, her fans turn on her and Margot finds herself canceled. To help her figure out what to do next, her sister, Savannah, who has a "cocktail of autoimmune disorders" and lives with Margot, books her a six-week stay at an Alaskan lodge--Margot had been planning to write a romance set in Alaska, but now she can take that trip to research a pivot, instead. When she arrives, Margot quickly realizes that not only is she in for a much more remote and rugged adventure than she'd expected, but the lodge's proprietor seems to have walked right off the pages of one of her books. Dr. Forrest Wakefield has returned home to Alaska to care for his ailing father even though he was on the brink of a major breakthrough in cancer research back in Los Angeles. Now he spends his time working as his father's personal physician and leading the guests on outdoorsy excursions. Forrest vowed to never get romantically involved with a guest, but his attraction to Margot keeps growing until it becomes impossible to ignore. This debut romance is beautifully written, nicely balancing humor and heat with realistic drama and conflict. Lavine is aiming for a meta-romance as Margot finds herself falling into various trope situations, but while these scenes are often funny, the book isn't doing anything new with those tropes and they sometimes feel shoehorned in. Margot and Forrest's roles as caretakers to their relatives, however, ground the story in deeper emotion and lead to refreshing attitude shifts and insights for the characters. An overstuffed rom-com with strong emotional depth.COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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