There's scope for a good novel here: Eleanor Bee (Elle), who comes from a somewhat dysfunctional family, has always wanted to work in publishing. She gets a job and works her way up, although the story jumps ahead leaving many of the details missing.

While the pace is good and I kept reading, I found Elle a mixture of likeable and unbelievable. She doesn't much like most men, but her behaviour belies this. We don't really learn why she changes from gauche and immature to being well-groomed and popular; I liked her more when she was younger.

Some poignancy, and I appreciated the many references to Georgette Heyer. But too much that's sordid in the book for my tastes.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2022/02/happily-ever-after-by-harriet-evans... ( )

So I tend to re-read this book a lot because it is a really long book. And I have to say it is not really the romance aspect of this book that causes me to still read it. It is the totally messed up circumstances that are going on in the main character's life that for some odd reason speak to me. Maybe it is because Eleanor is a flawed character that has many regrets. And it was nice to follow a character from the age of 22 to the age of 33 where they were finally starting to get their stuff together. A lot of times it makes me laugh when I read romance novels where the main character is 26 and lamenting that they are not engaged and married with two kids. Who are these people?

In Happily Ever After, we get to follow main character Eleanor Bee from the time she is 22 to when she is around 33 years old. Eleanor comes from a broken home and a mother who she is still making excuses for though all signs points to some serious issues with her mother. Practically estranged from her father and brother she throws herself headlong into the publishing business in London.

It was very interesting to see Eleanor as she was at 22 and to see how different life events had changed her over time. I think of myself at 22 (dumb as hell about a lot of things out there) and now at the age of 35 and wonder why did I find myself always giving other people so many chances to keep crapping on me. And that was what I related to a lot in this book. Eleanor seems to make up a lot of excuses for those around her and is blind to the point that her denial of what is going on in her mother's life was just sad. Eleanor is definitely flawed and that was great to see. I think a lot of times most romance novels make the heroine some perfect specimen that you don't understand how the person just does not have the perfect life.

However, besides Eleanor, the rest of the characters in the book really don't seem as well developed. For as long as this book is you would think that we could get some insight into many of the other characters mentioned. However, except for a few characters, we don't get a chance to follow them and see how they grow over time.

The writing I thought was and is still good. However, I thought the pacing was the biggest problem for me throughout this book. Things take a long time to get explained. We stick with certain plots longer than I think are needed. I think that if some sections of this book were cut out it would have made everything flow much nicer together. ( )

Brilliant. Great story about families, growing up and how the past affects the present. Funny, real and sad. ( )

I started off actually liking this well enough, as the set-up was very powerful. I particularly enjoyed Elle’s difficult relationship with her brother – that scene at the start when they’re children is simply brilliant. Sadly, we don’t stay in this childhood moment as we’re quickly tumbled into Elle as a young woman trying to make her way in the publishing world

Entirely due to the great start, I was prepared to give Elle the benefit of the doubt and kept my determination going for a good 100 pages or so. Gradually it dawned on me that, no matter how much I tried to deny it as a reader, Elle is simply a doormat, and a dull one to boot. Sorry, but she just is. Yes, I know she’s a borderline alcoholic with an alcoholic mother, and surely medically depressed, but every time there’s a crisis she simply just keels over and agrees with whoever the strongest person in any particular scene is. I have to say it’s never her. If you want interesting depressive and/or alcoholic women in your fiction, you’re better off with Marian Keyes. However, there was one moment when I got rather excited because Elle was about to launch into a very justified row with her bitchy boss, but the moment said boss challenges her, Ellie gives in and just agrees. Sigh …

There’s also an allegedly torrid affair between her and another boss, Rory, whom she’s obsessive about but really I just didn’t believe anyone would be interested enough in her to bother. That goes for the on-off relationship with an ex-colleague too – and the moment when she realises (no serious spoilers here) that he’s fathered a child by someone else has to be one of the great clichés of romantic fiction – so clichéd that I couldn’t help but laugh uproariously. Sorry …

Then the storyline jumps again and we’re a few years on and she’s living and working in New York. Sadly she’s not any more interesting than she was in the UK and for the rest of the book, I did even more sighing. The relationships she has with the two possible men she’s supposed to be with are worryingly unrealistic, and indeed neither man is very nice or even interesting. As a result, the ending is nonsensical. Or would have been if I’d cared enough about what happens to her. If the novel had lost 150 pages or so, it might have been better as Elle wouldn’t have been so intensely boring and irritating. That said, the book covers she’s responsible for in her publishing job sound nice – maybe these pictures should have been included in the novel as they would certainly have been more riveting than our heroine. Oh well.

Verdict: 2 stars. Decent enough plot, but a too dim and unlikeable heroine ( )

I’ve read Harriet Evans before and enjoyed her books, unfortunately I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much. I loved the fact that it was set around the world of books and publishing but from the start, I didn’t like the main character, Elle and didn’t engage with her throughout the book. As a naïve and daft 22 year old, going into raptures over having post it notes and a computer on her desk in her new job, she just didn’t seem believable. As she grew older, I didn’t like the person that she became. She has a difficult relationship with her family, her parents divorced because of her mother’s fondness for alcohol and she doesn’t have an easy relationship with her brother. She keeps the feeling of guilt and failure (in her eyes) most of the way through and a lot of the time I wanted to shake her away from her feeling of responsibility for other people, in particular, her mother. Despite the fluffy looking cover, the book covers some darker issues like alcoholism and how easy it can be to go down that road and how decisions made by others can affect you for life.

Elle does go on to make a success of her career but her feeling of guilt and not belonging have a knock on effect on her relationships until eventually she has to decide which it is she actually wants from life. I did like the book, but I wasn’t engrossed by it. ( )