Any Trope But You by Victoria Lavine
Beloved romance author Margot Bradley has a dark 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.
Review: This was such a cute read! I loved following romance author Margot as she flees her disappointed readers and heads to Alaska for a six-week stay in a remote Alaskan resort. While Margot doesn't believe in happily ever afters, she is struck by the romance tropes that keep happening whenever she's around Dr. Forrest Wakefield. Forrest, meanwhile, is crushed that he had to leave his dream job as cancer researcher behind to take care of his father and the family resort. One trope after another, the two can't help but feel pulled closer to one another.
I liked a lot about this one!:
- The Alaskan setting was so fun and led to cute situations like needing help staying warm in a tent.
- I really liked that Margot is a romance writer herself so the book sort of pokes fun at the tropes it includes between herself and Forrest. I also liked that she has been outed for not really believing in the love stories she writes in her books.
- I liked that both Margot and Forrest were caretakers for family members and had suffered embarrassing outings on the internet. I thought they had a lot in common and a lot to bond over.
- Loved the sister relationship between Margot and Savannah and the way it evolves and matures over the course of the book.
- This was great on audio and I really enjoyed the dual narration. It felt like I was listening to an Abby Jimenez book!
- I think this would make a cute movie.
Not a lot I didn't like:
- It felt like the shunning of Margot as an author was a bit overblown. I don't think legions of her fans would have cast her aside and thrown her books out etc. etc. the way it was portrayed. And I think in real life her publisher would have put a spin on it and showed up for her.
- I wish we had gotten more of a sense of her previous relationship and what it was like. It was basically just dropped that he was awful, didn't value her, and dropped her.
- I loved the narrators overall but the male voice the female narrator deployed during spicy scenes gave me the ick. I'm sorry!! It was too low and slow. Otherwise, narration was great.
- I enjoyed this so much and found it entertaining but not sure it was anything super revelatory or different from other rom coms and not sure how well I'll remember it as time passes. Just not too much to make it stick out from others I have read.
Stars: 4
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