I struggled with this one from the beginning. Bella was self-centered, rude, and kind of pathetic, which made it difficult for me to root for her. When she got in bed with her best friend and friend's fiancé so she could whine about her life, I was baffled. What a weird, boundary-breaking thing to do. And of course Bella is so jealous that her bff would pay attention to her own fiancé, gasp! Get over yourself.

I do think that the book synopsis basically told you everything that happens in the plot and there are no surprises in the story. The romance wasn't developed at all and just dropped on us, it felt like lazy writing to me.

Overall, this was not my cup of tea.

I voluntarily read and reviewed this book. All opinions are my own. Thank you to St. Martin's Griffin and NetGalley for the copy.

Not That Kind of Ever After iis a charming and delightful romantic comedy that puts a fresh spin on the classic fairy tale trope. The story follows Katie, a struggling journalist who is assigned to cover a celebrity wedding in a small town. When she arrives, she is surprised to find that the groom is her ex-boyfriend, who she has not seen in years. Despite their initial awkwardness, the two quickly find themselves drawn to each other once again. What sets this book apart from other romantic comedies is its witty and irreverent humor. The author has a talent for writing sharp and funny dialogue that keeps the reader engaged and entertained throughout the story. The use of fairy tale motifs and allusions adds an extra layer of whimsy to the narrative, without detracting from the more grounded and relatable aspects of the story. The characters in the book are also well-drawn and likable. Katie is a relatable and endearing protagonist, with her own quirks and flaws that make her feel like a real person. The supporting cast of characters, including the groom's eccentric family members, add humor and depth to the story. The romance in the book is satisfying and believable, with a slow and organic build-up that feels authentic. There are no contrived misunderstandings or melodramatic plot twists, but rather a gradual and realistic progression of the relationship. I loved portrayal of small town life. The author captures the sense of community and interconnectedness that comes with living in a close-knit town, as well as the joys and challenges of rural living. The book is a delightful and entertaining romantic comedy that will leave readers feeling warm and fuzzy inside. The humor is sharp, the characters are likable, and the romance is satisfying. It's a perfect read for anyone who enjoys a good fairy tale twist, or just wants a light and enjoyable escape from reality.

2.5 ⭐️ Received this book as an ARC From NetGalley and I really wanted to like it, it sounded like something I would absolutely love normally but for some reason I had a hard time getting through this and to me it boiled down to I wasn’t a huge fan of the characters. The story had some really good parts but I just couldn’t bring my self to rate it higher than a 2.5 because I almost didn’t make It through. The story follows Bella as her life has hit to her an all time low, her best friend moved out and is engaged, her parents divorce and a lack luster life life. Bella is basically learns that change isn’t always a bad thing and sometimes love is right in front of you. There were parts that really brought me in and parts that really lost me. I think the story line could have been refined a little more there was just so much going on I felt It was easy for me to get off track. Overall I ended up liking where the story ended up but I just wasn’t necessarily taken in the entire time

A young writer on a journey of self love, and finding her way in her fast changing surroundings.

Bella is a writer aspiring to be published. She has been unlucky in love, and is dreaming of finding the one and having her Happily Ever After. After another disastrous date, still working as a receptionist, and her best friend moving out and getting engaged Bella feels like everything she ever wanted is out of reach and slipping between her fingers. When she gets an idea to write a serialized story of her dating journey as fairytales, will she find her prince charming, and finally get everything she has been wishing for, or will she lose herself her pursuits.

I can appreciate what the author was going for with this one, and I love a story of self love and learning your worth but I would not classify this as a romance more a contemporary.

2.5 rounded to 3

Bella was just really annoying and hard to root for throughout this book. Especially when she was so awful to Mark and later especially Marty. It was a fun premise but I didn't see much connection between her and Marty and then all of a sudden they're together.

I cannot spend anymore time with this character. Belle is entirely unlikeable. She's a narcissist that I'm supposed to be rooting for? No thank you. I skimmed the rest and cannot abide a happy ending for this woman, so I'm calling it now and letting it go.

**Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC**

2 stars

This book was okay. The narrator started out funny but became super needy and over dramatic real quick. I wasn’t crazy about the time skips after each part. Some of the characters seemed really flat and not developed. I’m still wondering what was so great about Ellie. This book was almost a total fail for me, but the humor alone gave it 1 star.

Thanks to the netgalley and the publisher for this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book wasn't my favorite, but I really enjoyed the concept and the writing's playful tone.

The protagonist, Bella, is a Fleabag-esque trainwreck and aspiring author suffering from an acute lack of inspiration. At the start of the book, Bella isn't having the best time. She's feeling stagnant in her job as a receptionist at a publishing house. Her best friend Ellie, with whom she has an intensely codependent relationship, just moved out of their flat to live with her fiance, and her room was taken over by a German couple with an exhibitionist streak. And, after a bunch bad luck on dating apps, she still hasn't found her Prince Charming.

After a particularly bad hookup with a hairy guy named Charles Wolf, Bella embarks on a new writing project. The first chapter is a dramatized version of Little Red Riding Hood that pokes fun at her time with the big bad Wolf. When her story goes viral, she starts seeking out more and more outlandish fairy-tale-themed hookups to fuel her creative process and, in her obsession, starts pushing away the people who care about her. Then, she needs to decide whether these relationships are a price she is willing to pay for her big literary break.

Luci Adams clearly has a great sense of humor, and this book is full of fun little quips and clever references, but Bella just doesn't have the same sort of charm as Fleabag for me. Ultimately, I found her to be really unlikeable, even once she started to realize the error of her ways. It felt like, even by the end of the book, she hadn't really matured enough to deserve her redemption arc, and there were no real consequences for some of her more egregious behavior. The love interest in this book, frankly, deserves better.

I'd definitely be down to read more of Luci Adams' books in the future, but this one just didn't resonate with me.

Not That Kind of Ever After by Luci Adams is a cute romantic comedy about a woman who wants her own fairy tale.

Story Recap:
Bella Marble is an aspiring author, but the closest she comes to writing is being a receptionist at a small publishing company. Her tidy life is starting to unravel. Her parents are divorcing and her best friend, Ellie is marrying Mark, and moving out. She finds some solace with Ellie’s brother Marty but still feels her life is out of control.

Marty tells her that she should stop searching for the one, and instead spend some time just having fun. When she goes on a disastrous one-night stand, she writes a fairy-tale retelling of the night on a storytelling app. The story goes viral, and Bella feels the pressure to keep writing stories about dates gone bad.

My Thoughts:
I enjoyed this fun story and found it very entertaining. I like stories like this where the main character grows and becomes stronger. I didn’t like Bella much at first, but I don’t think we’re supposed to like her much in the beginning. She’s self-centered and immature. But, through the book, she grows and becomes more self-aware and mature.

I found the book funny at times, and sometimes emotional as well. I enjoyed all the bad dates and felt empathy for Bella for having to go through such a tough time to find her prince charming. And although she was immature and annoying at times, I did grow to enjoy her antics and was rooting for her to find her own happily ever after.

Recommendation:
I recommend Not That Kind of Ever After to anyone who enjoys romance. I received a complimentary copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Summary
Bella just wants to find her Happily Ever After. She just seems to go on one bad online date after another, explaining away all the red flags just so she can find her person. And everything is changing; her best friend Ellie is moving out and moving in with her boyfriend, her writing is going nowhere and her parents are divorcing. Bella doesn't understand why everything couldn't just stay the same.
After one more bad night stand, Bella writes about it like a retelling of a twisted fairy tale on a website and suddenly she's got her mojo back with writing. When Ellie's twin brother, Marty, recommends she stop trying to find the one, and start having fun, Bella starts having sexcapades and writing about them and is on top of the world. But new roommates, navigating her parents' situation, fighting with her best friend and the new pressure Bella has put on herself to have dating and sex experiences for material for her book is overwhelming. Will she ever get her happily ever after?

Review
I really enjoyed the craziness of Bella's experiences and how she related them to fairy tales. But Bella was hard to root for. She was selfish and self-centered. That does make her more human, but also you sometimes just want to shake her. It wasn't really a romcom in my opinion. Maybe more focus on the comedy part. It was funny, sometimes laugh out loud funny, but where wasn't really romance. It was predictable. I called the ending like 2 chapters in. I would have liked to have seen more development of Marty. His evolution from the one night stands a few times a week wasn't much of an evolution as opposed to an overnight change. It would have been more believable to me if he had a reputation that was more assumed instead of being true, as opposed to really having a girl in his room when he helps Bella out. Overall, I liked to story and the journey and how it ended. 3.25 stars

𝚁𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐: 3.5⭐️
𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: Contemporary romance📚

𝙼𝚢 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚜:
It was an okay sweet and lighthearted read

𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎:
Romantic comedies
Fairy tales
Entertaining reads
Exes and O’s

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝙸 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎𝚍:
Short chapters

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝙸 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛:
Felt repetitive at times
There wasn’t alot of romance
Bella’s character was annoying
Predictable

Cute Book, I Loved It
Super Fun but it did have some strange things but what an adventure
It was very addicting to read, you just don't want to stop because you wanna know whats gonna happen next and boy is it usually crazy
There we some parody types of fairy tale re-tellings
There were highs and lows in this book for the characters
Bella (the main character) was a hot mess and so was her life at one point and she had to figure a lot of things out
She had a great best friend and other people in her life, but they also caused her some drama and it def added to the story as a whole
And the ending, so glad it ended the way it did.... can't really say much bc you just have to go read it

Is there really a Happily Ever After???

Finding out that this is the author's debut novel and can't wait to see was she comes up with next.
I got this book as an ARC and am very glad I did, might have missed out if not. So I deff would like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for a copy. The above comments and opinions are my own, honest and voluntary.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing the ARC.

DNF 20%

I really wanted to like this book but I honestly felt like Bella was incredibly insufferable. And I get that this books is supposed to be exploring her learning about herself, but I couldn't get passed the "woe is me, no one loves me" narrative that Adams had painted.

I'm sure it's fine. Just not the book for me.

I really didn’t like this at all. I thought about tossing it out the window multiple times.

I really couldn’t find the substance- is am not opposed to spicy, substance-less books. This was really cringe-y and I didn’t like any of the characters. I thought Bella and Ellie’s relationship was really co-dependent. Their relationship came off more weird than strong and everlasting. All characters acted really immature given their ages. Like Marty “flirting” with Bella by ragging on her and everyone all the time. I don’t think Bella has a healthy relationship with anyone in this book. This was just an overall flop. I finished it today and I’m having a hard time remembering why I picked it up.

No descriptive spicy scenes. But explicit material. Not great content.

Special thanks to Netgalley and St Martins Press for this digital ARC.

So, first off, this isn’t a romance. This is more along the lines of a Bridget Jones’ Diary – very British, very wry, very messy.

Everything in Bella’s life is falling apart. Her parents, who had the perfect fairy tale romance, are divorcing. Her best friend Ellie is getting married to a man Bella loathes and moving out with him. Her own attempts at romance are going nowhere, and oh, instead of being a writer, she works the front desk of a small press. But when her write-up of a boring one-night-stand starts going viral, her pursuit of those likes over all else further crack her life apart. Where’s a fairy godmother when you need one?

“There are still good ones out there. You just have to kiss a few frogs first.”
“I’ve already kissed all the frogs.”
“All of them?”
“All London-based frogs, yes.”


I spent a lot of time picturing that meme of Marie Kondo saying “I love mess!” while reading this book. Bella is, without a doubt, a complete mess. She has a weirdly symbiotic relationship with her BFF Ellie and sees nothing wrong with crawling in to bed with her – while she’s sleeping with her boyfriend. Bella despises Mark, said boyfriend, though she also freely admits that no one could ever be good enough for her best friend, no matter, you know, whether Ellie is happy or not. I had a hard time believing she was 29 because she just felt so immature to me.

“I know,” I say, smiling, “and I know I don’t need a man to make me happy but I still want one. It’s just, apparently, none of them want me!”


I don’t mind necessarily mind messy and unlikeable heroines, but Bella was also utterly blind to exactly how hypocritical she is. While her experience with micro fiction sites was amusing, she has no problem despising a guy who gets a book deal from writing about his awful dates while simultaneously lapping up praise for her straight-from-RL dates lightly rewritten as fairy tales. So while the fairy tale pieces were initially amusing (the Seven Dwarves one had me laughing out loud), though the mean-spiritedness of it eventually grated on me. With about 20% of the book left, Bella does eventually realize exactly how selfish she’s being and how pretty much all her problems are self-inflicted, just in time for everything to be wrapped up nicely with a bow.

Despite Bella’s… everything… the book was still decently funny. The part I think that let me down the most is that the plot was extremely predictable. There’s no question really who she’s going to end up with, how the giant blow-up with Ellie is going to resolve, or what’s going to happen with her writing. You can basically read the blurb and guess with probably 90% accuracy. For such an interesting and promising premise, it was a definite letdown.

Overall, this didn’t particularly work for me.

I received an advance review copy of this book from Neon Rainbow. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Not That Kind of Ever After by Luci Adams is one woman’s journey to claim her own happily ever after in the age of dating apps and the quest to find your soulmate. Life for Bella Marble is not what she imagined. Instead of being a published author, she is a receptionist. Instead of being happily married, she is single and her best friend, Ellie Mathews, is moving out and getting married! Feeling adrift, she spends some time with Marty, Ellie’s aggravating but oh-so-hot brother. When Marty challenges Bella to stop looking for “the one” and just have fun, she finds a new side of herself. After posting about a disastrous one night stand in a fairy tale style, she has gone viral. Now the pressure is mounting to write more of these fairy tales, but can she write one without living one? Can her soulmate already be before her eyes?
Even though this story is described as “Fairytale meets feminism,” I was intrigued by the premises of modern day fairy tales. However, this story was a disappointment from the opening line. The story is broken up into seven parts with a total of 100 chapters! Groan! Granted the chapters are quick but they're almost too quick. Once you get into the chapter, it’s over. Then there’s Bella. How can we cheer and root for a character who introduces herself with this opening “It came, unlike me, while I was riding backward cowgirl on what must have been the hairiest man in London.” Ummm, what?!? The story doesn’t get better from there. Bella is completely unlikeable. She is judgmental and has an inflated ego. She wants to be the next Bridget Jones. Another groan from me. Overall, I did not enjoy this book. I would not recommend Not That Kind of Ever After.

Not That Kind of Ever After is available in paperback, eBook and audiobook

Ooof I really did not like this book. I pushed myself to finish because I wanted to see how it played out with the heroine ending up with the best friend’s brother. Basically, the whole book is about the heroine sleeping with different random guys and I have a one night stands and then writing about it. She makes it that she’s looking for her Prince charming. I just don’t understand how she thought that if the guy wasn’t good, she’d still give me a chance and sleep with him? I also really hated how she didn’t care about any of her friend’s feelings. I found the heroine very immature and at times selfish. I also do not like how the heroine treats her best friend once the friend gets engaged. The heroine basically ghosted the friend because she couldn’t handle the friend being engaged and being with her fiancé. I think another reason I didn’t like this book was because it was a Brit lit. I find the British romances are much slower paced than American. The only thing I liked about this book was the romance between the best friends brother. He was really sweet and always caring for the heroine.

A fun quirky RomCom staring Bella who believes still in fairy tales and is looking for her Prince Charming. Instead winds up with lots of one night stands with losers and has alienated all her friends.
There are some good laughs and you keep wondering when will Bella grow up. Was a ok read but a little out there in the dream world. Thank you NetGalley for this eARC. I am voluntarily posting an honest review after reading an Advance Reader Copy of this story. #NetGalley #NoyThatKindofEverAfter

Not That Kind of Ever After is the kind of book that makes you really cherish your best friend in adulthood when everything around you is changing.

Bella is stuck in a rut. Her best friend Ellie is moving out and got engaged to Mark, the man Bella can't stand. On top of that she still hasn't written a book and is still answering phones at the literary agency she works for. Then she finds out her parents are getting a divorce and selling her childhood home. Everything Bella thought she knew is crumbling around her and she needs a change stat. Enter Marty, Ellie's brother. The three have been best friends since childhood, but when he tells Bella to let go of finding "the one" and just have some fun, Bella takes his words to heart, and then puts them to practice. Entering into a line of one-night stands, Bella documents the tales as reimagined fairytales on a new online platform which gains her a few followers, and then a few thousand, then a few hundred thousand, until she has over a million. With each new follower, Bella falls more away from her friends and the life she thought she knew. How can she make peace with change, but still stay true to herself?

I received this book as an ARC and was very excited by the premise of the storyline. It was a fun read full of characters but at times I found myself unable to get into the story. Bella's relationships with Ellie, Marty, her parents, and even her flatmates Annie and Simon at times felt very superficial. But, Bella comes around in the end and grows more into the person she wants to be and I think what the reader ultimately needs her to be as well. I wish her friends-to-lovers storyline with Marty had been a little more fleshed out at times - honestly how much can the man talk about his one night stands with OTHER women but then tell her he always thought they'd end up together?. Overall, I enjoyed the book even though it ended up being a little different than I thought it would be.

"Because you don't look like seal guts," he says, his tone so strangely serious. "You never have. In fact, if you're asking me, I've always thought you're beautiful."

Bella feels like her life is spiraling out of control: her best friend is moving in with her fiancé, her writing career isn't taking off, she wants to fall in love but she still hasn't found the one, and to top it all off her parents are getting a divorce.

So what does she do? She decides she's throwing caution to the wind and starts dating whoever she wants without fear, writing those experiences down, and then sharing them with the internet. What she doesn't expect is the response to her stories and the real-life consequences...or a man already in her life being the prince charming she's been looking for all along.

Ya'll this book was so cute! I really enjoyed the journey that Bella went on. She's tired of waiting for love to happen to her, so she's making it happen for her. Her "sexcapdes" are hilarious and how she makes them line up with a different fairy tale each time is perfect.

This book is definitely a rollercoaster of emotions. You root for Bella, you get that secondhand embarrassment when she gets into certain situations, you get frustrated with her, and then you are proud of her in the end.

If you are in the mood for a cutie little rom-com that has very loose fairy-tale vibes, this one is for you! Luci Adams knocked it out of the park with her debut novel and I can't wait to read what she writes next.