From the publisher:
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.
“Lavine turns many of the common romance novel tropes on their heads in this stunning debut. Top-notch banter will have readers laughing out loud as they root for Margot to finally achieve her own happily-ever-after.”—Library Journal, starred review, Romance Debut of the Month
“A love letter to ‘romancelandia’ and the tropes it celebrates.”—LibraryReads Top Ten Books for April 2025
“In Lavine’s often humorous, sometimes heart-wrenching debut, a jaded romance author navigates a slew of rom-com tropes…It’s sweet to watch the leads bond over their mutual understanding of caretaking and sacrifice. Readers will have no trouble rooting for this pair’s happy ending.”—Publishers Weekly
“This debut romance is beautifully written, nicely balancing humor and heat with realistic drama and conflict…Margot and Forrest’s roles as caretakers to their relatives ground the story in deeper emotion and lead to refreshing attitude shifts and insights for the characters.”—Kirkus
If this is a debut, Lavine knocked it out of the park. I hesitate to validate that because I’ve been burned too many times before by publishers (usually it’s the publisher) creating a “debut author” by changing the name of an established author. A new name does not a new author make. But I did my due diligence and searched the Library of Congress Authorities, and Lavine appears to be a debut author. Yay!
This was a very clever premise for a romance. The main character, Margot, is a best-selling romance writer who has been burned by relationships to the point where she is a complete skeptic about romance – but she keeps those thoughts to herself. She is beloved by her readers until someone hacks her computer and shares her “Happily Never After” file with the internet. This is a file where she writes what her cynical heart truly believes to be more realistic endings to her novels; instead of happily ever afters, there is violence, divorce, etc. Her fans are outraged and Margot is canceled, and her publisher drops her.
Margot is mortified and totally despondent. Her sister arranges for Margot to spend six weeks at a “resort” in a small town in Alaska, but when she gets there, Margot quickly realizes this is no luxury resort but rather a backwoods lodge, ready for ice fishing, snowshoeing, and hiking through snowy mountains, none of which appeal to Margot. But her sister has thought this through, and she is stuck but good. There’s no internet or cell service, so she can’t even call her sister to berate her.
Forrest runs the inn along with his incapacitated dad and the hotel manager. They have several regular guests staying with them who are there for adventure, and Margot’s sister has roped her into trying some of these events. For every event she completes, Forrest has a letter from her sister for Margot. Margot has always taken care of her sister, who has severe health issues, and she really needs the income from another book to help pay medical bills. So Margot decides to write a mystery, seeing if she can capture the same magic as her romance novels did. Her agent is on board, but the first problem is that Margot is not really familiar with the mystery genre or the terminology generally used in those types of books, and without the internet, she is sort of stuck. But she plots and schemes and writes anyway, figuring she’ll fix any technicalities later.
Meanwhile, Margot and Forrest spend time together, and the attraction is real. They go through several romance tropes, laughing all the way from no connection with the outside world for six weeks to forced proximity to enemies-to-lovers to sleeping in one tent and so forth, and it is a brilliant plot device. This is a laugh-out-loud romcom with some real heat, and it is definitely going to make my list of the best books of the year. Don’t miss it!
4/2025 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
ANY TROPE BUT YOU by Victoria Lavine. Atria Books (April 1, 2025). ISBN: 978-1668079270. 336p.
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