While the story was fine, I found the writing to be so jilted and awkward. There's a fine balance between yearning and horny that I like in my romances and this book waltzed its merry way into horny with nary a look backwards. There's an audience for that but in this situation, I am not it. I much prefer emotional development than sexual tension or at least sexual tension that stems from emotional development. This just felt like it was all sex from the start. And contrary to what it seems, it is not because the Trixie sells dildos for a living. That part was actually great. I just felt like the reconciliation part was a little too unrealistic. Plus the dialogue was strange on occasion.

Ok, this was CUTE! The first chapter opened up with the mention of sex toys and boy oh boy did it set the mood! This book was steamy and heartwarming! It has a re-falling in love story that will melt your heart.

Thank you to Avon and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Overall, I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I thought the premise was great -- a sex-toy saleswoman named Trixie is trying to make her way in the world by following her dreams with support from friends but not family, and restaurant owner Andre is fighting his changing neighborhood and his inner demons to maintain his family legacy. Oh, and they're exes. Oh, and Trixie starts doing her trunk shows at his restaurant! But despite an intriguing premise, there were too many things that didn't work for me in the end.

My main issues were dialogue and characterization. I liked a lot of the side characters and their brief appearances, but the way that they talked to our protagonists and the way that Trixie and Andre talked to each other felt stilted and at times exaggerated in its use of millennial speak and cliches. I was not really sure what anyone's actual personality was because they all spoke in such a way that was just a little off. But when there were hints of personality, I didn't really like what I read. I found the motivations behind Trixie and Andre's emotional turmoil murky, like they just reacted really strongly to anything that happened to them ever, making their choices seem erratic and unfounded. Andre just came off as a jerk who never listened to anyone or learned from his mistakes from the beginning of the book to the end, making him feel flat. Trixie had more growth in the plot involving her parents, but I did not find enough support for her choices regarding forgiving Andre for breaking up with her via Post-It two years ago. I also did not feel like they had chemistry with each other -- even the on-page sex didn't really do it for me, unfortunately. However, I loved the use of toys and explicit mention of things like lube! More of that, please.

So, this is a 2 star book for me. I really liked the idea of this plot and the elements it promised to bring, but I don't think that everything was executed in a way that makes me want to recommend this.

While most romance novels have a female focus, Happy Endings takes takes it a step further and follows a strong woman (with a support system of other strong women), working towards her dreams of owning her own business. Trixie learns how to balance business, family, traditional cultural roles, and eventually forgiveness and love while not sacrificing her dreams. A fantastic read.

I’m not usually a fan of second chance romances, but I enjoyed this book. I knocked off a star because the company that Trixie works for sounded like an MLM and I am still convinced that it was. I loved how determined Trixie was, the food descriptions, and the overall message.

Thank you to Netgalley and Avon for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

rating: 3.5 stars.

Happy Endings follows Trixie Nguyen, who is determined to make her sex toy business a success. During her first pop up event in D.C, she runs into her ex-boyfriend who dumped her post with a post-it note. Trixie is the last person Andre Walker expected to see at his soul-food restaurant. They decide to create a truce, for business and desire. But things get complicated when old feelings and incredibly career opportunities pop up.

This is definitely a steamy read. It's sex positive, which I love, and is perfect for the exes back to lovers trope. I loved the main heroine, Trixie. She's such a strong and bold character, and goes after what she wants.

There's Vietnamese-American rep, along with Black characters, creating a feisty and sexy diverse romance.

I recommend this if you want a steamy book to add to your collection!

Trixie and Andre meet again after a terrible break up in which Andre left only a post it note. They have to team up together to help each other fulfill their goals. This is a funny read that contains a great deal of sex toys and delicious cuisine. The main characters diverse background is a window in to different cultures that at the heart are not very different when trying to meet the expectations of parents. The journey of Andre and Trixie is filled with heat, humor and a lot of laughs.

This fresh, fun, feisty, sexy story is perfect for fans of Sex and the City. Ex-lovers, now enemies, Trixie and Tre are reunited when Trixie's pop-up sex shop lands in Tre's family's restaurant. Both businesses are struggling. Can a truce between these two help them succeed? There's no denying their explosive chemistry but will it burn everything down?

Really wanted to like this, especially since it is own voices and has a Vietnamese heroine, which isn't heavily represented in romance. The book read a bit like women's fiction more than romance, and while the love scenes were good, I never felt Trixie and Andre's emotional, intimacy and romantic journey were fully realized, just their sexual one. Andre was really hard to like and Trixie dealing with his problematic behavior made me feel bad for her.

There’s relatively little Vietnamese-American representation in books, particularly in romance, so I was so excited when I heard about this book! Happy Endings is a second-chance romance with lovely characters and sex positivity.

After flunking out of pharmacy school, Trixie moves to Washington DC where she pursues her dream of opening up her own sex toy storefront. Her first pop-up goes well, and she’s excited until she realizes that her ex, Andre, co-owns the restaurant she held it at. Andre is stressed about keeping his late mother’s doesn’t expect to run into Trixie either, but once they see each other again, neither can deny that they still have chemistry.

The romance was very hot! It’s also a second-chance romance to friends-with-benefits to lovers. The second-chance romances that I usually read don’t have the couple get back together so early, so that was a bit of a surprise. This book was also very sex positive; Trixie sells sex toys and has, over time, become very comfortable talking to people about sex and their bodies.

I also liked the characters! Trixie is ambitious and confident in her dreams, even if her parents disapprove. Andre is similarly willing to do whatever it takes to keep his mother’s restaurant open; he also has to grow more comfortable with new changes. The side characters were great as well. Trixie has such a supportive friend group, the Boss Babes, and Andre’s sister Keisha pushes him to face the changes necessary to keep the restaurant afloat.

Trixie is Vietnamese American, as is her friend Zoe. Andre is Black, and there are Black side characters. I’m grateful for more Vietnamese-American representation, especially in romance! Also, I know that some people are looking for books with interracial couples that are not white, so here you go.

Happy Endings was a steamy read. I liked the characters and how supportive they all were of each other. I think you’ll like Happy Endings if you’re looking for a sex-positive second-chance romance!

Trixie and Andre annoyed me as characters. I stopped reading since I wasn't enjoying the book. They were in a relationship till he dumped her with a post it note. DNF


*************************I received an ARC for my honest opinion. from NetGalley.*****************************************

Thien-Kim Lam's debut novel seems to know what it has to do to tick all the boxes of a successful contemporary romance, but the story never quite attained the necessary levels of character-driven conflict and emotional depth to carry a story like this. The drama of the second-chance romance relies on mining the hurts caused when Trixie and Andre broke up the first time--when he left her a note and disappeared. The breakup could have been entirely avoided if not for poor communication and big assumptions, and the general immaturity Andre demonstrated at that time in his life. The external conflict that must necessarily lead to a disruption of the couple's relationship is weak, and depends on more of Andre's immature, all-or-nothing thinking. And the secondary cast is populated by characters who seem like shorthand stand-ins for authentically-imagined people: the playboy poet, the mother hen, the protective best friend. There's a good deal of repetitious telling-not-showing (e.g., by Chapter 6, we've been told at least three times how Trixie met her friend Keisha), but repeating the nature of each character's internal wound does not make it more believable.

Ultimately, both Trixie and Andre are striving to overcome wounds based on inherited anxieties about other people's actions, rather than the core belief that they are unloveable/underserving of love. Romance unequivocally requires that core belief to exist for one or both protagonists at the outset; through the relationship at the heart of the story, those misconceptions should be healed, challenged/affirmed, then finally obliterated. But the truth about Happy Endings is that the internal wounds Trixie and Andre are trying to overcome are flimsy and artificial. When the entire romantic conflict could have been solved with just one practical, adult conversation, you know there's simply not enough meat on the bones of the romance itself.

Andre's foodie-ness and Trixie's affinity for selling sex toys/educating women about pleasure are interesting enough traits, but sadly not enough to make either of them especially likable. If this is the start of a series--as I suspect it is--I hope Lam and her editorial team focus more on compelling, character-driven conflict in future installments, and spend less time telling readers about the world those characters inhabit.

The cover and the description of Happy Endings, a debut novel by Thien-Kim Lam piqued my interest from the get go so I crossed my fingers and requested a copy! I was thriled when NetGalley approved my request!

I love second chance romance, strong/independent female characters. and steamy romance 🔥.
Happy Endings gives you all of that! It's a fun, foodie, romance with a powerful message of fighting for your dreams. #BossBabes!

3.5/5 ⭐️'s. I enjoyed diversity of the characters. The take no shit, go getter heroine and her squad. The body/sex positivity. All the mouthwatering food descriotions and bonus recipes she gave at the end!

Happy Endings will be available 5/18/21. Check it out!
Big thanks to @NetGalley and @HarperVoyagerUS for my #gifted eARC in exhange for an honest review!

#HappyEndingsBook #NetGalley #HarperVoyagerUS #msthienkim #OwnVoices #NetGallyeyARC #bookish

AHHH I loved this book so much!! Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me an ARC of this.

I loved that this was an #ownvoices book about a Vietnamese heroine. I feel like I learned so much abut her culture and the vivid descriptions of food made me hungry all the time. But most of all, I loved the sex positivity and education of this book! It's funny, thinking back on this book and what stuck out to me, it wasn't the second chance relationship. But rather, it was the overall character arcs and plots that were separate from the relationship alone. And that's what made me give this book five stars.

Highly recommend!

Omg this book was so good!
The atmosphere was definitely different from anything else I have read, but it had so much diversity and the romance was amazing! highly recommend.

Happy Endings would have been so much better had the romance and the Hero, Andre not existed.

Since she was dumped by a post-it note, Trixie has moved states and is now thriving with the support of her three best friends. She’s selling sex toys, but more importantly, she’s focusing on body and sex positivity and doing her best to educate women. It’s when she’s hosting a pop-up at a local soul food restaurant that she runs back into Andre, the post-it note guy.

Sparks immediately fly between the two. The steam between them was definitely hot and written well, but that was the only thing that was right about them. Their relationship is fraught with misunderstandings and poor communication. It felt like they ignored any past red flags and quickly jumped back into the lovey-dovey parts of dating. Andre…I’m looking at you. His past decisions were so terrible, I have a hard time understanding how Trixie could have ever forgiven him.

And yet, she kept forgiving him, as he doesn’t learn from mistakes. Despite how strong she was regarding her family and her business, she was a doormat for Andre and just let him continually treat her badly. It didn’t jive with the rest of her character so it felt out of place.

While I loved the variable representation and the normalization of body positivity and sex, Happy Endings was a good first effort from a debut author.

Thank you to Netgalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for the review copy.

Looking for a second chance romance with stubborn and driven MC’s who are trying to prove to themselves, and their families, that they can achieve success and make their families proud? Then this is the story for you!

We meet Trixie who’s the youngest of three in a Vietnamese-American family. Her parents immigrated to America and have always wanted their children to be successful and secure with the professions they’ve chosen.

Two years previously, to this story beginning, Trixie, realizing that pharmacy school wasn’t for her drops out of college in order to pursue her dreams of helping others. Deciding to veer off the path, her parents set her on, creates a rift between her and her parents. Not only does her father decide to no longer speak to her but she finds a note from her boyfriend, of two years, breaking up with her.

Andre hasn’t forgotten about Trixie, even though he was the one to end things. The last thing Andre wanted to do was hurt her and he regrets the pain he caused her by leaving. He was not expecting to find her in his dinner, let alone selling sex toys to a crowd of people! Andre is awed by Trixie, she’s so confident and sure of herself, she’s changed so much in the two years since he last saw her.

Trixie dreams of helping others by helping normalize sex education and awareness while Andre is desperately trying to make his neighborhood proud by keeping his family restaurant open and serving the community like it always has. We watch as they both struggle to accept help, each letting their insecurities and egos get in their own path to success.

It was so easy to empathize with both Trixie and Andre when it came to their deep connections to their family and overwhelming worry about letting their families down.

This is more than a romance, it’s a story of finding the confidence to follow your heart when it come to your dreams and love.

Happy Endings by Thien-Kim Lam #sixteenthbookof2021 #arc Thank you to #NetGalley and #HarperCollins #AvonBooks for the advance reader copy. (Pub date 5/18/21)

This book introduces Trixie and Andre, two exes who clash while trying to keep their respective businesses afloat. The businesses? A family owned restaurant and a sex toy boutique. There was a fair bit of exposition in the beginning, but almost as soon as I noticed it, it stopped. I appreciated the fact that Trixie was part of a sort of advocacy group for women business owners, but I was annoyed at its name. Since it kept getting repeated throughout the book, it kept irritating me, but that is a personal preference. As expected, there are some great steamy scenes, and I also appreciate the sex positivity, but wish the miscommunication angle that that is so often the case in romance novels was not present. Also, I wish I liked Andre as a character more, but his emotional immaturity was a real turnoff for me. #happyendings

Warning: This book will make you hungry for soul food and Vietnamese cuisine! The descriptions of the drinks and meals in this book were top notch, and while, yes, there’s a lot of sexy descriptions in this book (it is very open door!), it’s really the food images that are going to stick with me for a while.

I really appreciated the “own voices” perspective, body positivity, and anti-agism stance of this book. The theme of learning to identify and satisfy your own wants and needs—in all areas of life—runs throughout. Although the two protagonists repeatedly engage in one of my least favorite tropes—not letting someone explain themselves—the story was interesting enough to keep me going.

That said, I’ve never read a romance book that included quite so many lengthy sales pitches and I would have preferred a bit less of that. I appreciate an awesome boss babe (and this book had several!), but after a while I started to wonder if there was going to be a surprise order form or an invitation to join a MLM at the back of the book. Thankfully, what turned out to actually be at the end of the book were a couple of drink recipes from the story, which is much better.

3.5 rounded up to 4 stars.

Thank you to #NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an advanced reader copy for review.

I was very excited about this book premise because I think the romance genre is still lacking in terms of sex positivity and representation slash diversity, and this read delivers on that front. It's a sexy second chance romance about two exes with unfinished business together. Trixie has just moved to DC and is determined to make her sex toy business a hit to prove to her traditional Vietnamese parents that she can succeed. Her first pop-up shop goes well, until the restaurant she at, its owner strolls in. It's none other than her ex Andre. The one who broke up with her via post it, all 'Sex and the City' style. He needs to save his family's soul restaurant, and so they agree to a merger of sorts to host her pop-up series at his business to save his business and help launch hers. But, their chemistry is still smoldering and they soon engaged in an FWB situation as old flames are reignited and deep feelings reemerge. Told in dual perspectives, this book is yes very spicy and has lots of backstory. Yet, the writing is very captivating to keep my attention. It should be noted that there is a content warning for grief. I don't know why but these characters just felt a little cringe to me. But all in all, this was still a fun romance romp, and a bit of a smutty one, when you need to indulge.