REVIEW: Happy Ending by Chloe Liese
Dear Chloe Liese,
I generally enjoy Chloe Liese books anyway but the premise of Happy Ending especially caught my attention: Two people discover their ex-spouses are dating and, still hurting from their very recent divorces, pretend they are old friends/lovers who have reconnected and are together as well. Hijinks ensue and along the way they actually do fall in love. I mean, what’s not to love about that?
Bookseller Thea Meyer is very recently divorced from Ethan. Ethan is a jerk. Thea is better off without him but she spent 15 years with him and she’s deeply grieving her loss. She had wanted a baby, Ethan kept putting her off. She wanted colour in her life, Ethan liked “greige”. Ethan wanted to move from St. Louis to Pittsburgh. Thea wanted to move to New York. They moved to Pittsburgh. When she asked Ethan to consider going to counselling with her to rekindle their intimacy he bailed altogether. He wouldn’t even try. Thea is someone who finds it easy to believe she’s not worth trying for. She has what is most probably ADHD and was a very active and curious child. Her dad was mostly absent and her mother found her too overwhelming. Then there was Ethan. Thea has spent her life making herself smaller.
Chef Alex Bruscato is very recently divorced from Jen. Their divorce story is different: he wasn’t present for Jen and when he realised he needed to step up he did – but it was too late. Alex holds himself accountable for his mistakes and doesn’t blame Jen for their divorce. There were reasons for his behaviours (he never cheated or anything awful – he was just busy with his restaurant and being a high achiever and he lost sight of his marriage along the way) and he’s in therapy about them to work on himself so he can be a good dad to their four year old daughter, Mia. He’s determined not to blow it with Mia. It’s too late for him and Jen.
Thea shares custody of golden retriever, Argos, with Ethan. Jen and Alex share custody of Mia. Thea and Alex meet when they are picking up Argos and Mia respectively at Thea’s former home, where Jen and Ethan have obviously been cuddled up. Both Thea and Alex are feeling pathetic and miserable. Jen and Ethan look happy and (in Ethan’s case) smug. Thea can’t stand it so she does what she does – she tells a story. She and Alex are old friends. Alex joins in and runs with it and before they know it, there is a strong suggestion that Thea and Alex are rekindling a former romance. Alex even invents a pet name for Thea immediately. He calls her “Ted” and it stays that way all throughout the book.
“Obviously, I got a little carried away.”
“I got it started,” I concede.
“Yeah, but I dialed it up to an eleven. I do that a lot, dial myself up to an eleven.” He sucks hard on the cigarette and exhales a stream of smoke up into the night sky. “It’s my fatal flaw.”
“Mine is dialing myself down to a one.”
Thea loves stories. Since she was a child she’s narrated her life – telling herself her own story in third person as if she were watching it. She loves books and reading and so it’s not surprising that she works in an independent bookstore. Even though it wasn’t her choice to move to Pittsburgh, it’s become home. She lost touch with her former friends in St. Louis but met her best friend, Lauren, in the bookshop when Lauren came in to buy a book. And now Thea’s met Alex and Mia. Mia is an adorable and precocious child who reminds Thea a lot of herself at the same age. (It’s likely Mia has ADHD too, although it is never specified in the book.)
Alex and Thea become fast friends and when Lauren moves away from Pittsburgh for work, they become even closer. Both are recovering from the trauma of divorce, both are learning to be single again and working out what’s next. And they just fit. They’re accepting of one another and make each other laugh. When one is sad, the other is there to offer comfort. They quickly agree they are too bruised to contemplate any kind of romantic relationship (Thea wonders whether she ever will again), but they become fast friends. The more Thea comes to love and rely on Alex in her life, the more she refuses to risk the friendship by moving their status into relationship territory.
When the book begins they’ve been friends for two years and Jen and Ethan have suggested they take a joint beach vacation with Mia and Argos. Somehow Alex and Thea find themselves agreeing.
The story starts in the now, a couple of weeks before the trip and skips back to when they met, swapping between the past and the present as it tells the story of how their relationship grew and how Thea gradually recovered and became ready to take a leap of faith – both personally and professionally.
An important part of the story, peppered in among everything else, is Thea’s journey to understanding herself and her needs and allowing herself to be “big” rather than making herself small all the time. It’s moving on from the failure of her marriage and making it all make sense somehow.
Maybe, when it comes to telling the stories of our failed relationships, the wounds they inflicted, there are only unreliable narrators, too much hurt warping our perspectives, thwarting any chance to land on the truth of what went wrong.
Maybe, instead of asking, What went wrong? we should ask, When did we stop telling the same story? Maybe if we could try to figure out when the tugs of our experiences became so distanced, they tore that shared story apart into two stories whose plots couldn’t be reconciled, conflicting characters as perpetrator and victim, irreconcilable portrayals of what hurt was premeditated and what was incidental, we’d actually get somewhere.
Because then it wouldn’t be all about figuring out, blaming, or exonerating who was wrong or right. It would be about figuring out what kind of story you’d hoped to tell, the story that got away from you; what kind of journey you want to take as you pick yourself up and start to stumble down the road again, the story you want to find yourself in.
Alex and Thea are the kind of friends where anyone who looks at them knows they actually really (romantically) love each other but for some reason aren’t admitting it. Thea even knows she really (romantically) loves Alex. She just won’t let herself take the risk. They cuddle and nuzzle and do a lot of other things (non-sex things) which are far too intimate for any kind of regular friendship. At first I thought they were both in denial but then, as the book went on, it became clear Thea had realised and was just too scared to say anything.
I mean, Alex finds everything about Thea beautiful and sexy – even her farts! It’s obvious he is totally gone for her.
“I need you to say something really unsexy right now,” he tells me.
“Okay. Sure.” I rack my brain, then meet his eyes. “Did you pack any Gas-X? I forgot to take my lactase enzyme before I went to town on those olive and cheddar kebabs, and man, those cubes give me the toots.”
Alex snorts, then drops his head to my shoulder on a pained groan. “Didn’t work.”
“What?” I am baffled. “Alex, lactose-intolerance-induced gas is very unsexy.”
“But your toots are weirdly endearing? They sound like a tiny trumpet.”
I glare up at him. “You know the rule. If I ever toot, no I didn’t.”
“Right.” He schools his expression. “Of course.”
I came to understand that Alex was not in denial and perhaps never had been. It kind of changed the flavour of the story.
I very much enjoyed Thea and Mia’s relationship and her deep respect for Jen’s role in Mia’s life and the importance of Alex and Jen having, as much as possible, a good relationship in order to be the best parents they can be for Mia. I liked how Thea never felt threatened by Jen (unlike how Ethan felt about Alex.). I loved that Alex always thought Ethan was an asshole and wanted to punch him in the throat (he didn’t, but he wanted to). I loved that Alex always thought Thea was worth fighting for. I enjoyed the banter between the protagonists and the semi-friendly jealousy between Lauren and Alex as they vied for “best friend” status with Thea. I would happily have read more about Thea’s plans for the bookshop and Alex’s plans for his restaurant and cookbooks. I loved Alex’s tolerance for Thea’s chaos and their joint sense of fun.
I did find that there was a slight lack of tension toward the end. There wasn’t the revelation I was expecting. I found myself a little disappointed in Thea at one point late in the book (by the time “the past” had reached about a year before “now”). I did love Alex and Thea together though and I knew, absolutely, that they would make it if they only gave themselves the chance.
90% of Happy Ending was fantastic, 10% was good. Overall, the book was a winner I’m happy to recommend.
Grade: B+
Regards,
Kaetrin
Ooh, this does sound good, @kaetrin! Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
@Kareni: Hope you enjoy!