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.
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.
Title: Any Trope But You
Author: Victoria Lavine
Publisher: Atria Books
Expected Publication Date: April 1, 2025
Review:
Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for providing me with an egalley of this book to read and give my honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
We all have our tropes we love, and those we hate. So what happens when an author decides to take all the romance tropes and throw then in one book? A lot of fun, that's what! This Hallmarkish story had me from page one. Not only is it fun, it's funny, and witty, and just full of that push and pull chemistry that reals me in and keeps me stuck on a story.
Romance writer Margot Bradley has made a terrible mistake. She's forgotten how to let love into her life. Tainted by years of disappointment from the men around her, she channels her disbelief in love into her books. But when someone finds her own personal document of happily never afters, she gets canceled by her audience. Forced to face this tumultuous time in her life, and love by her disabled sister too much to let the opportunity slip by, the sister books Margot into an Alaskan hunting lodge turned extreme hikers dream. Margot is such a great character. She's charming and witty but she also has this nerdish quality to her that makes her super endearing. And she has no idea the hold she can possess on someone. Her blinders for love or anything like it are fully in place, until she meets Forrest Wakefield and starts to realize all those tropes she's written about in her many romance novels really do come true. Cute, chiseled man? Check! Man who wants to care for her? Check? Close proximity vibe? Check! Enemies to lovers? Well, sort of!
Forrest has his own demons. He's been forced to give up his promising research career to care for his injured father and help him get back on his feet. The man is so selfless he has given up everything he's ever wanted to make sure those around him do not suffer. But he also carries around a mound of grief over his mother's death and this keeps him tethered to a life he truly does not want. Meeting Margot Bradley was not what he expected at his hunting lodge turned extreme hiker's paradise, but here she is jumping into his arms and throwing him off kilter. So for all the tropes of a perfect man, he is truly un perfect underneath, giving up his own happiness so that others don't have to do so.
I don't know much about Alaska, except there's a lot of snow, ice, and cold. But what I do know is that it is beautiful. Lavine did a nice job creating a landscape that was at the same time inviting and frozen. I loved her descriptions and, despite me not loving the cold at all, she really did make me want to go to Alaska and check out what it may have to offer.
As the story unfolds, and Margot begins to write in another genre to see if she can fix her career, she finds herself drawn to Forrest over and over again. Lavine wrote their chemistry really well. Of course she inserts the love (lust) at first sight trope right from the very start. Though there is so much more to how the relationship between Forrest and Margot grows and changes, blossoms and sparks. The spicy scenes are just perfect enough to keep me wanting more. I loved the compatibility between the two characters despite their differences.
Lavine's pacing is spot on. The story flows well with a great amount of tension building and then bursting just at the right time. For those of you who are not fans, their is a "third act break up" but this story would not follow all the great tropes if it did not have that. I loved how Lavine truly built her story around almost every single romance trope you can think of. It made the book fun, if not a little predictable. But for me, I love a bit of predictability in my romance books. And her writing was very good. I enjoyed it. It wasn't full of the characters telling us what was going on, but truly showing us what was unfolding around them.
What probably hooked me the most in the book were Margot's letters from her sister. Each letter telling a story about their lives past, present, and future. It was like having another POV happening while you were only hearing from the FMC.
This book has it all: great tropes, firey chemistry between the two main characters, well developed FMC and MMC, fun and funny side characters. challenges, and growth and reflection. I'm definitely a Lavine fan and she will be on my auto-read author list for all her future books!
4.75 stars.
4.75 stars.
Author:
After many years and bookshelves crammed with Romance novels, Victoria has finally taken things to the next level by writing her own. When she’s not reading, writing, or enjoying the great state of Maine with her family, you can find her coming up with excellent reasons to make the next pot of coffee.
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