Title: This is What Happy Looks Like
Author: Jennifer E. Smith
Date of Release: April 2, 2013, Jennifer E. Smith Inc.
The story is about two young teenagers whose affections
broke the line between the worlds of fame and being kept. Graham Larkin is a
superstar, in the other side he is just like any other ordinary adolescents. He
fell in love and experienced things beyond the silver screen for an ordinary
girl he met in the cyber world. Ellie has this red hair and passion for poetry
whose mother is persevering just for her to Harvard. The mother and daughter
have dark secret which made them run away years ago to prevent her father, a
politician from ruining his career. Yes, they were the illegitimate family
until her mom decided to take her away and go far away from his father. What
would it be like when these two worlds: One, succumbed into the people’s
attention and the other one, must hide from the world? In a very modern but
almost unimaginable way, they met online, become friends and developed intimate
feelings which would encourage Graham to choose Maine, the state where Ellie
lives (and his family too at the moment) to be their place of setting for their
movie shoot. When they met, there were unexpected commotions of emotions,
confusions and realizations.
ABOUT THE CHARACTERS:
The characters were very modern. These times one of the uses
of the internet is to connect with people, including strangers no matter where
we are in the world. Fate made these two young people to accidentally meet
through e-mail, the rest of the story follows. Is it possible for two young
people to truly to fall in love in the world of worldwide web? They resemble
teenagers though in different world, have something within their hearts, things
they want but they do not know, deep ones that could make them happy.
In the story, Graham was this young boy, famous, rich and
admired by many as an actor, in the novel, it is said that he loves his career
and would rather continue than pursuing his education as advised by his parents
while Ellie, an ordinary girl, not rich and is a “nobody” compared to him is a
young lady who dreams of meeting her father someday. To see your father on
television and you cannot go see and get near him because he is unreachable and
is prohibited by fate and even doesn’t even know you are kind of sad and lonely
things. Trying hard to survive a fatherless life with a goal to enter college
and save and there comes this Mr. Idol who at the end saved the day and her
future.
ABOUT THE PLOT:
The story has a lot of commonplace elements. I would say
that it has this usual storyline where Mr. Great falls for Ms. Nobody then they
have to endure everything. This suits young readers who are dreamy and hopeless
romantics who fancy knights in shining armours ready to save damsels in
distress. For the cyber friendship, the author infuses norms of modern present
society that is so much into modern technology and the way we could make the
world small by e-mails, chatrooms and social networks. The fantasy of meeting
someone great online and finding true love, in this scenario, it happened to
two different people who became friends and shares their thoughts in their
everyday lives.
On the deeper side, Ellie’s mother disagreed to continue her
blossoming connections with Graham the fact that she was afraid the Press (the
world) would discover who they were and avoid what consequence it could inflict
to them and her father. There is a very short time frame if Graham finding out
the secret, then why did the senator try to do so? Did he happen to have an
effort to find them or just secretly support her daughter even though her mother
hides her from him? For sure he has these connections and power. The climax
that I expected is that the senator and his long lost daughter would have the
chance to talk and acknowledge each other than what happened in the book that
she just shook hands with him as a stranger. That moment was her chance, her
first and maybe the last to tell him who she really was.
The ending I would say is realistic though in a sense that
Graham was still Graham and Ellie, due to his love for her was financed to go
to Harvard to study. The author did not close the story if they ended up as lovers
together or not; the ending just showed that it was not the end because they
will still e-mail each other. What does happy looks like? As the title asks the
readers, it is about contentment and feeling complete for whatever life brought
or might bring for us.