Thanks to St Martin's Press and NetGalley for the advanced readers copy!

Belle is a young single woman who is looking for her prince charming. After many failures with typical dating, she changes her tactics and moves on to one night stands. She has fun but isn't particularly fulfilled. She turns her escapades into funny twists on fairy tales and posts them to a website for original works. Her stories start to gain attention and she loses her way for a while. Through all these experiences, she learns what she really wants and is finally ready to reach for it!

A fun story and very readable! The banter was great and it was pretty funny too!

Luci Adam's Not That Kind of Ever After is the story of Bella Marble who is unhappy with her life and with the help of a friend, decides to place less expectations of herself and just have fun. This, however, leads to it's own complications.

While the premise and some parts of the plot are entertaining, the execution isn't what I wanted it to be. There was a lot going on in the story and I didn't necessarily feel emotionally invested in it and due to the length of the novel, that made it drag a bit. There were a lot of great characters introduces, but we don't get to know them very well. The main issue lies with the protagonist, Bella. I found her to be inherently unlikeable. I don't expect a characters to have it all together as that would make for a boring book, but it does make it hard to read when you feel like the main character is judgmental and her self-destructive tendencies were difficult to read about.

Overall, I would say it was a good concept for a book, but the execution of it just didn't resonate with me personally. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Not That Kind of Ever After written by Luci Adams was fun, quirky, wholesome and overall enjoyable!

Our main character Bella, a secretary at a publisher, wannabe writer, and hopeless romantic, has been constantly looking for her prince charming. Idolizing her parents perfect marriage, she has been on countless dates looking for her happy ever after with no success. In her mind, quantity is key; someone has to be mr.right right?

In addition to her search for fairytale love, she’s looking to follow her dreams in having a career in writing, but her inspiration has run dry over the years. All of that changes after another terrible date with the Wolf. This disaster date sparks inspiration to write her own twist on the big bad wolf on this hip innovative site called B Reader, where novices can post chapter by chapter for anyone to read, comment or like. After her first post starts to take off, the crazy idea to continue her one-night stands in order to come up with content begins.
Simultaneously, her best friend Ellie has beat her to her happy ever after. She’s engaged. To a man that Bella can’t stand or get along with.
Adams takes us through Bella’s search for success and her own publishing deal, while also exploring Bella’s inner conflicts of relationships, self confidence, and goals.
Is Bella content with one night stands for the sake of her writing? Is her dislike of her best friend’s fiancé worth the divide from her best friend? Maybe everything that Bella has ever needed and wanted was right in front of her.

I gave this 4/5 stars! Loved the characters and totally found myself chuckling at certain parts of this book. I loved Bella’s personality and individual charm (or their lack of) and would definitely recommend this when it comes out in March!

This book certainly kept my attention even though a rom-com isn't usually what I gravitate towards. I was looking for a fun, light read and while I think this met the brief, I was also kind of pissed. I fully support women doing whatever the heck they want with their personal lives, so that for me wasn't the problem. Bella was kind of a jerk. I know she realizes this in the end but wow, what a selfish person. She's ridiculously lucky that her best friend continued to reach out to her after the way she acted - her jealously over her best friend's relationship was bananas. And what she did to Marty? I was flabbergasted. In some cases she was completely valid in her responses. Hearing that your parents are getting divorced when you're an adult who has constantly compared your relationships to the example in your life that you felt showed perfection would throw anyone for a loop. But again, the rest of her behavior was completely uncalled for. Marty was my favorite character the entire book. I wish there had been more of him!

This book was not quite what I expected. It started off introducing Bella Marble, a self-centered aspiring writer who slacks off at her job and thinks it's not only normal but necessary to insert herself into her best friend's relationship. However, this is not <i>just</i> a love story. It is a story of a girl in her 20s who is still trying to find herself and learning to see the best in people. Few books like this actually tackle a character's growth, let alone delve into it and make it the key part of the story like Luci Adams does here. I felt that Bella's love story was secondary to her own personal development. Really, a well-written book.

The title & cover immediately had me drawn to this book! While it did move a little slow, I thought it was super cute & funny debut! ❤️

Beautiful cover for a beautiful story. The main characters were complex and interesting. I loved it.

While this book had charm and a lot of potential, it didn’t hit the mark. It was very predictable, a little too cliche and the amount of time I spent trying to decipher the text messages drove me crazy. I’m also just not a fan of emails and texts taking up entire chapters of books. Cute idea but needed a lot more to make it a must read

This book was an ARC from Net Galley.

Rating this one is actually hard. I’m going to settle on 3 stars since I’d give it 3.5 for the fact that the plot was enough to keep me reading it…but that was because I was hoping the MC would have some redeeming qualities; character development and other issues would’ve gotten this about a 2.5 without a plot that I at least felt invested in seeing through.

While this wasn’t a horrible read, it has many things that just could’ve been done better. I did like the overall plot and honestly I’d be lying if I said I had never once wondered what it might be like to treat men as casually as some treat women. So the casual sex encounters (not graphic spicy sex scenes unfortunately) were actually a plot line that I enjoyed, and using those encounters for a future book (MC wants to be an author) was a believable spin.

For issues, there are quite a few. The MC just doesn’t have many redeeming qualities. She’s 29 (I’m pretty sure it said that) but her behaviors are more like a 18-22 year old - that stage of being an adult but still being fairly selfish and self-centered. She’s pretty whiny and quite frankly that’s not fun to read about since her thoughts & actions had me cringing a lot just for how shallow she seems. And then even after we think the MC has learned the errors of her ways…nope right back to it for a few more chapters.

The author has a lot of characters in this one…but yet chooses to only identify less than a handful with their nationality (German and French). As if people of those nationalities are somehow explained simply with the label? That just didn’t sit well with me as I couldn’t find an actual valid reason for it.

Still have mixed feelings as there were many things I just wish had been done better, but I did still enjoy the book as none of the issues were deal breakers for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Griffin for a copy of the e-arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you Luci Adams, St. Martins Press and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. Not That Kind of Ever After comes out March 14, 2023.

I was really excited about the premise of this novel and thought that I would relate to the FMC, Bella. Basically Bella is a woman who gets broken up with even though she thought she was going to have her dream wedding and also hates her job as a receptionist when all she wanted to do was write. While on the dating scene she decides to turn the not so great dates into fairy tales on a story telling app, her stories become very popular. In her quest for fairytales will she lose sight of the reality that is right in front of her.

Like I said I was very excited for this book. and I think in a female journey/ learning about yourself this book was good. I think for me it was hard to watch the fallout of Bella's actions, even though I don't think she should have gotten as much grief as she did. I also think that as a romance novel it fell kind of flat for me, I just wish we could have gone a bit more into hers and Marty's relationship. Overall I think this book would be appealing to women looking for more of a women's fiction with not a big of emphasis as the romance that does happen I the book. I would be interested to see what the author does in the future.

Quick read for this girl, homesick for England. Bella works her way through personal and private emotions while she juggles a boring day job - very much like any of us would, but with fairy tales embedded in it.

NetGalley ARC - not a book I’ll be singing to the heavens for, but one who got me out of a massive funk. I needed a quick chick lit rom com friends to lovers book and this did the job perfectly!

While I think the premise had more promise than is realized, it's a genuinely good debut. I'm a sucker for modernized fairy tales, and this starts out with a bang, tackling Little Red Riding Hood with comedic gusto. The subsequent one night stands/scary tales weren't as strong, but I really liked that the author takes a sort of meta approach, with her protagonist recognizing that her concept and initial writing was a hard act to follow. As the book grapples with where to go next, so too does Bella, as she struggles to figure out how to weave her plot all the way through her series of short-term romances. As a writer, the process explored-- including mining one's own life, using friends and family for inspiration, and the temptation to engineer experiences in order to write about them-- all really resonated with me.
Where the book really hits a snag for me is in its ending, as Bella comes to term with her selfishness and seeks to rectify her 'wrongdoing'. Maybe I'm a horrible person (I am), but I didn't think Bella did anything so awful she needed to spend a third of the book atoning for her sins. It felt like it was purely for the plot, or else a preemptive defense against those woke warriors who'd otherwise lambast a single, white, moderately affluent female. Why can't we accept that we're all a little messy and flawed, without having to throw ourselves on a pyre?


PS: Dear Luci Adams-- keep going, looking forward to reading the next one!
Had to put that out there, since this is getting surprisingly low user reviews, and I wouldn't want a budding author of Adams's caliber to be put off by that negativity.

This is the kind of book you come across and immediately want to read everything that the author has penned. So fun and witty! Bella is great lead character and her story is so entertaining. Love the bit about her parents and how they maintain a deep friendship. If only all divorces could be that great.

Bella is another aging woman who has had issues in her love life, having endured a gamut of disappointments not only in her relationships but in her career as well, to the extent that she transmutes her life into a fairytale. Her risky, questionable behaviors were cringeworthy and made her less likable until the big fallout when her emotional upheavals became palpable and painful to witness. The secondary characters were too many to keep ordered and, with the exception of her best friend ,did not really enhance the story. Couldn't find anything hilarious in this book and by the end couldn't care whether she got her happy ending , especially finding out who she ended up partnering with. Now, after saying all this ,I would read this author again as it was the essence of the story I disliked, not the writing.

I was really excited about Luci Adam's "Not That Kind of Ever After" from the cover and the description, but, I had the HARDEST time getting into this book. When I first read the description, I thought "Wow, I have a lot in common with the main character," and it never really cliqued for me.

For me, I LOVE getting into the depths of characters, deep diving on why they feel a certain way and what makes them feel why they did. This fell really flat for me and I'm really sad that it didn't expand. This had a ton of potential but really did not fit where I wanted it to be.

I usually LOVE Fairy Tale Retellings, but this one was just not for me.

This books was pretty funny and I loved the main character and her quest to find that “happily ever after” I was cheering her own to find her “Prince Charming” and loved the end and how it closed everything. This books covers so many topics we tend to face everyday from rejection to gaining confidence and even family and friend issues. It does help us learn if we stay true to ourselves we are able to make it out and be okay.

ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

2.5 Stars Not That Kind of Ever After by Lucie Adams is a cute and sometimes magical story about a woman who dreams of fairytale endings, but whose life isn’t so magical. The story was a slow-paced at times and I didn’t like that Bella didn’t explore her relationship with the main love interest until well into the story. Because it took so long to get there, we didn’t really get to know his character as well as I would’ve liked. A whimsical, easy read.

After Bella spends the night with the hairiest man she’s ever met, she starts writing about her trysts with fairy tale characters on a writing website. As she goes viral, Bella becomes more and more desperate to live these fairy tale encounters.

This book had me ROLLING laughing. I loved how insane Bella got as she was reaching for any chance to live an encounter she could write about. Her thoughts felt super real as she struggled with letting go of finding Prince Charming, desperately looking for wolfs and Smurfs and ultimately ended up realizing how selfish she became in her quest to complete her story.

I absolutely loved the resolution in the end, I think Bella and Mark’s arc was one of my favorites.

Thanks to @netgalley for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

*ARC Review*

2.5 Stars

Not That Kind of Ever After had a really cute premise, a girl who dreamed of a fairytale working through her not so magical life. There were bits and pieces of the story that felt magical to me (like partying with Smurfs and Bella's date with Mystery Man), but most of it was slow and cumbersome. I liked how Bella's stories were direct write ups of her experiences, but I really wish we got more character development for some of the men. It found it weird that we were 70% of the book in and we were just exploring her romantic relationship with her main love interest. I wanted a deeper dive into Marty, but we never got it. Bella as a main character was cute, but I LOVED her feisty energy on her date with Mystery Man, I wish we got to see more of that blunt, fiery spunk.

This is a cute easy read, but if you want to see a relationship really grow... this is not the one for you.

Thank you St. Martin's Griffin and Netgalley for an arc of this book.  This debut novel is such a fun chick-lit story.  Bella is in her late 20s and always believed she would be a writer and have a fairy tale wedding.  Her boyfriend of 4 years ends things at the beginning of the book and she goes on a few blind dates and dating app dates and has a lot of fun.  Bella ends up writing her life/sexual escapades and publishing it on an online reader forum where she ends up with lots of follows and likes. Can she become a true author and stop being a receptionist at a publishing company and will she meet her prince charming?  I can't wait to see what else this author writes.