Title: Isla and the Happily Ever After (Anna and the French Kiss #3)
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Published: 2014
Isla has had a crush on Josh since freshman year. This year, Josh notices her but is their relationship meant to be?
Stephanie Perkins is great at writing fun, easy to read contemporary romances. I finished Isla and the happily ever after in about one evening. It's a short read. Nothing extraordinary but good if you need something to fill a boring evening in.
I'm not going to lie, the story is fairly predictable. You can always guess where it's going. However, something that set Isla apart from other YA romance novels is that Perkins explores what happens after a two people get together.
If you've read Anna and the French Kiss or Lola and the Boy Next Door, the writing style is not a huge departure from the two books. Personally, I believe that Perkins writing has improved. The description in this book is far superior to Anna. Maybe this is just me but sometimes in Anna and the French Kiss, Anna's descriptions of things/people around her make her seem really vapid? Here, Perkins has really done her research for this book. I'm excited to see how Perkins's writing flourishes!
The two main characters are Isla (duh) and Josh. Both these characters are explored well enough. I would say pretty much the whole book centers around these two characters, so if you hate the characters then there' a higher probability of you disliking the book. Lucky for me, I really enjoyed Isla and Josh!
Out of Perkins's three protagonist, I find Isla the most relatable. Anna, I found her kind of vapid and bland. (sorry!) Lola was way too over the top for me. Isla is more of your average girl. She's reserved and has no clue what she should be doing in her future. Josh is also more my type of guy. Etienne was just way too charismatic for me. Ha ha. Warning, Josh has that brooding artist persona going on.
As I've said, Perkins is darn good at writing romance stories. She somehow always manages to get the readers to yearn for the two characters to get together. There was still conflict that the relationship has to go through, but it wasn't soap opera level problems, more realistic in my opinion. The resolution of the conflict at the end was very rushed, I feel like one more chapter would have helped.
The two main characters are developed enough. However, the supporting characters remain cardboard cutouts throughout the book. Side characters are barely given any time in the story which would explain their lack of character development. I don't even get why certain characters were included. The story would have been fine without yet one more two-dimensional character.
So, if you enjoyed the two previous books, then you've probably already read this one . If you've been hesitating because you were disappointed with Lola and the boy next door (like me) then give this book a try as I believe that it's much better than Lola. Also, Anna and Etienne are featured much more in this book than in Lola.
