Word Out 2014

This Is What Happy Looks Like, by Jennifer E. Smith

Reviewed by Daniela

This story starts off in Henley, Mane, where the main character, Ellie O'Neil lives with her mom. She works in an ice-cream shop with her best friend, trying to earn enough cash to pay for a summer Poetry course at her dream school, Harvard. Then, there is Graham Larkin, famous movie star, young and handsome who live is California and owns a pet pig. This is where the story really starts, by these two people meeting. While Graham was trying to send an email to someone to walk his pet pig named Wilbur, he typed the wrong email address, so the email went to Ellie instead. After emailing Ellie for some time, he had to go somewhere else, since he was acting in a new movie. The place where the producers wanted to do the movie was not available anymore, so Graham proposed to do the movie in Maine. No one knew his reason for this sudden decision, but he was doing all of this to meet Ellie in person. The story goes off from there.

This Is What Happy Looks Like is a story about trying to start a new life, trying to pursue something that you deeply want, and keeping your secrets hidden, until they are ready to be told. It’s about how life is so different from what it could be if you had made different decisions, and most of all, it’s about what makes you happy, what brings back your childhood memories, and what makes you glad to be no different, to have no regrets, and to not wish for a different life.

Jennifer E. Smith tells another interpretation of romance in this book. She tells us how two different people could still be friends, and much more than that. Maybe a relationship that starts off long distance could still be maintained. Jennifer E. Smith has other cute romance stories like these, if you would like to read them, they are The Geography of You and Me, and The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight.