Happiness for Beginners – Published 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.” – Goodreads
THOUGHTS
OKAY…yes.
Next up on my Katherine Center journey is this gem that is soon going to be made into a movie…and it’s got the best casting.
When I read I do not picture faces, but having seen the casting prior to reading, I definitely tried my best to see these characters as their respective actors, which in this situation added to my enjoyment of the book. That’s not always the case for me, I tend to hate fancasting and avoid it so it doesn’t ruin the characters I’ve made in my brain. But…my brain also doesn’t actually picture them. Anyway, I digress.
This book is wonderful. It’s got a brother’s (younger) best friend trope and a wilderness survival/camp element. It is hilarious, suspenseful, and tender.
I laughed, I cried, I was frustrated with side characters getting in the way of what was obviously true love, and I cannot, simply cannot, wait for the movie adaptation.
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