Title: Happiness for Beginners
Author: Katherine Center
Publisher: Macmillan
Release Date: March 24, 2015
A year after getting divorced, Helen Carpenter, thirty-two, lets her annoying, ten years younger brother talk her into signing up for a wilderness survival course. It's supposed to be a chance for her to pull herself together again, but when she discovers that her brother's even-more-annoying best friend is also coming on the trip, she can't imagine how it will be anything other than a disaster. Thus begins the strangest adventure of Helen's well-behaved life: three weeks in the remotest wilderness of a mountain range in Wyoming where she will survive mosquito infestations, a surprise summer blizzard, and a group of sorority girls.
Yet, despite everything, the vast wilderness has a way of making Helen's own little life seem bigger, too. And, somehow the people who annoy her the most start teaching her the very things she needs to learn. Like how to stand up for herself. And how being scared can make you brave. And how sometimes you just have to get really, really lost before you can even have a hope of being found.
Oh. Oh, WOW! I loved this book. I loved the whole experience of reading it -- the feel of the *gasp* paperback in my hands, the late night, just-one-more-chapter atmosphere, and the story. What a great story.
After a hellish year -- six years, actually -- Helen Carpenter decides she needs to do something for herself. Something to improve her outlook on life, something to kick start the new Helen. And that something is a three week survival course in Wyoming. Just Helen, glorious nature, a freak snowstorm, some rutting animals, a too-young instructor, a bunch of college kids...and Jake, her annoying little brother's equally annoying best friend.
Surviving the adventure is just the start. It opens her eyes, and helps her learn. And when it does, she realizes the past isn't what she remembered or made it, the future is full of possibilities and the present...well, it's survivable, especially when you focus on your happy.
What can I say, except...READ THIS BOOK! It was an absolute gem. A delight to read, an unputdownable book that I simply adored.Happiness for Beginners wasn't what I was expecting, nor is it like anything I've read recently. It made me happy. I smiled big, then bigger. I chuckled, then laughed. Hell, I think I even snorted at one point. It was unexpected (the book, not the snorting, although that was a touch unexpected too, honestly).
Happiness for Beginners didn't just help me find my happy though. It also made me cry, made my heart pound and made me think. I sat back and took stock -- there were some surprisingly deep and meaningful moments in this brilliantly written book -- and listened to what the characters were saying. And what they were saying made sense to me. It was like a revelation. It made me do something I was a little aghast at...I dog-eared pages, so I could remember the words on them easier. Actually, I tried to highlight many, many passages here, but um...well, it was an actual book, not an e-book, so I had to do something. And wanting to remember these beautiful, thoughtful words seemed like a damn good reason to deface a book, wouldn't you say?
There was simply so much to love about this book. It's hard to narrow it down, but in the spirit of wonderful Windy and her advice to find three things from each day that made you happy, I'm going to try:
1. Helen... She was a fun, funny and lovable lead. I loved her insight, her insecurities, her perseverance and her bravery. God, I wanted so much for her. I got angry for her. I got angry AT her. I wanted her to achieve her goals, to achieve them alongside her.
2. Jake... Come on, the guy was beyond amazing. Smart, unexpected and just kind of perfect. He had one line in particular (which, because of dreaded spoilers, I can't share here) that just made me love him all the more. His story come from nowhere and he was magnetic. Katherine Center absolutely nailed his characterization.
3. Pickle... The dog may not have been central, may not have been much at all, but hell, she was kind of the lynchpin. She made this story possible, she propelled it, she changed the tone of it and she was a bada**.
I could probably go on, but I won't. Simply know that this is romance at its finest. Nothing dirty or over-the-top (not that there is anything wrong with those things -- I happen to love them too), just a exceptional, interesting, engaging story with a beautiful message, wonderful characters and the ability to cram ALL the feels into 312 pages.
~ Review by Beth
Katherine Center is the author of four novels about love and family: The Bright Side of Disaster, Everyone Is Beautiful, Get Lucky, and The Lost Husband. Her books and essays have appeared in Redbook, People, USA Today, Vanity Fair, and Real Simple—as well as the anthologies Because I Love Her, CRUSH, and My Parents Were Awesome. People magazine calls Katherine’s first novel, “cleverly told and uncommonly appealing,” and Kirkus Reviews calls her newest one, "heart-rending and heartwarming." The Dallas Museum of Art’s Texas Bound and Literary Death Match reading series have featured her work, BookPage named her a “new writer to watch,” and Varsity Pictures optioned the movie rights to her first novel. She is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program. Katherine lives in Houston with her husband and two sweet children.
