Any Trope But You Review

By Victoria Lavine

Star rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Spice rating: 🌶️🌶️

Pub date: 4/1/2024

Blurb

 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.

Category: Contemporary Romance

 

Read if you Like:

🫎 Romance author FMC

🫎 One tent

🫎 Doctor MMC

🫎 Sworn off relationships

My Thoughts:

I had so much fun reading Any Trope but You! I always love a book that recognizes that romance readers are the best readers (sorry not sorry) and plays with the idea of tropes in a way that is both fun and slightly making fun of them. It was a very clever way to make a hero who was a doctor who also led wilderness excursions, carried people down mountains, and sometimes helped out when there was only one tent without it seeming ridiculous.

On top of having a great sense of humor, I liked how this book explored the challenges of having a family member with a chronic illness without it seeming like those characters were a burden. As someone who struggles with depression one setup I tend to dread is the parent who got depressed and ruined a child's life and now they are stuck caring for them as an adult. While this does happen and it can be really difficult, I think this type of story can often come off as blaming people who struggle. This story really captured how someone can be a person who brings so much joy to other's lives and also needs help sometimes.

If you love a good tropy situation this is a must read! Additionally, if you are a switfty this one is right up your alley! It is also a great fit for fans of hot doctors, fish out of water, enemies to lovers, or a moose cute (ok that's not a thing but I feel like it should be). This is a wonderful debut book and I can't wait to read more from Victoria Lavine!

Thanks to Atria Books for providing me with an ARC. All opinions are my own.