If you give me a book that has a main character who works with books in any ways, I’ll want to read that book. So when I saw Any Trope but You was about a bestselling romance author, I was sold. Today I want to tell you about this book and what I thought!
A big thank you to Atria Books and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC to read and review. This doesn’t affect my opinion in any way.
A bestselling romance author flees to Alaska to reinvent herself and write her first murder mystery, but the rugged resort proprietor soon has her fearing she’s living in a rom-com plot instead in this earnestly spectacular debut by a stunning new voice.
Beloved romance author Margot Bradley has a dark secret: she doesn’t believe in Happily Ever Afters. Not for herself, not for her readers, and not even for her characters, for whom she secretly writes alternate endings that swap weddings and babies for divorce papers and the occasional slashed tire. When her Happily Never After document is hacked and released to the public, she finds herself canceled by her readers and dropped by her publisher.
Desperate to find a way to continue supporting her chronically ill sister, Savannah, Margot decides to trade meet-cutes for murder. The fictional kind. Probably. But when Savannah books Margot a six-week stay in a remote Alaskan resort to pen her first murder mystery, Margot finds herself running from a moose and leaping into the arms of the handsome proprietor, making her fear she’s just landed in a romance novel instead.
The last thing Dr. Forrest Wakefield ever expected was to leave his dream job as a cancer researcher to become a glorified bellhop. What he’s really doing at his family’s resort is caring for his stubborn, ailing father, and his puzzle-loving mind is slowly freezing over—until Margot shows up. But Forrest doesn’t have any room in his life for another person he could lose, especially one with a checkout date.
As long snowy nights and one unlikely trope after another draw Margot and Forrest together, they’ll each have to learn to overcome their fears and set their aside assumptions before Margot leaves—or risk becoming a Happily Never After story themselves.
Review
If a book has a main character who is an author, I’ll always want to read that book. Any Trope but You sounded like a perfect winter read and I’m glad I waited until December to curl up with this book. Margot is a bestselling romance author but when a document is leaked where she writes her happily never afters her image is ruined.
I’m sure I’d be just like Margot and not really know what to do in the middle of Alaska at a retreat like that. I mean, I’d be able to curl up next to the fireplace with a book, but camping in the freezing cold? No way! Forest is a doctor working on research for cancer and came back home to help his dad when his health declines. The chemistry between these two jumps off the page from the start, but I appreciated that we get a slow burn romance. There’s a lot of banter, but the real romance takes time to develop.
Margot even starts talking about the tropes she sees when meeting Forest and interacting with him. I really appreciate the author having fun with this and making it a bit of a joke. Margot’s sister has a chronic illness and Forest’s dad’s illness are big parts of this story and I feel like the author did well with these story lines. It made understanding our main characters just a bit easier.
Besides the amazing romance between these two, I feel that both really grow themselves. Forest realizes it’s not his fault his dad is ill and it’s not his responsibility to do every little thing. Margot realizes the same about her sister and that love isn’t always painful and something to believe in. Any Trope but You has a great balance of lighthearted and serious and I could imagine being in Alaska with our characters. I really hope this author gives us more books like this!
I really enjoyed Any Trope but You and I can’t wait to see what this author writes next. This book has me wanting to visit Alaska. Have you ever been? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!
