Review: The Happiest Ever After

The Happiest Ever After by Milly Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Polly Potter is unhappy. Her boyfriend Chris treats her like a doormat, a cross between his mother and a housekeeper, leaving his stuff strewn everywhere and taking her for granted, he even had an affair. She used to love her job as business consultant, heling companies to turn themselves around. But after the business was bought out and a new boss installed she has been demoted, marginalised, and put down. Many of her ideas have been repackaged as those of her new boss and she dreads going in to work. Her only respite is her creative writing class, but she keeps that a secret because she knows Chris, his spiteful daughter, and snobby sister would just ridicule her if they knew. Polly is writing a novel about a character called Sabrina, whose life resembles Polly's, except Sabrina is much braver, and Sabrina's partner Jasper could react violently when he finds out that she is leaving him.

Polly decides to go to the seaside, where her beloved aunt and uncle once took her. However, she is robbed and hits her head - causing her to lose her memory. When she wakes up in hospital she thinks her name is Sabrina and doesn't want the hospital to contact the police because she doesn't want Jasper to find her.

A kindle hospital visitor, Marielle offers to let Sabrina stay in her annex flat. Marielle has a history of helping lame ducks, some of whom repaid her trust by stealing from her, so Marielle's friends and family are suspicious of Sabrina and her amnesia. Marielle's son Teddy owns a local Italian restaurant and is persuaded to give Sabrina a job, cleaning the toilets and chopping vegetables (not at the same time you understand).

Soon Sabrina is thriving in the warm and happy restaurant, finally in the bosom of a close and loving family. But all is not well. A chain of Italian restaurants is planning to open a new restaurant right next to Teddy's and they seem to started a dirty tricks campaign to discourage Teddy's patrons by leaving one star reviews and trying to get a compulsory purchase order for Teddy's car park. Can Sabrina bring her expertise to help Teddy save his restaurant?

I did enjoy this, but I felt there were too many things that were clearly only there as plot devices. For example, some of the chapters are prefaced by a 'humorous' newspaper clipping from the Daily Trumpet where the newspaper has used the wrong words and created an offensive/funny alternative meaning eg referring to someone as Chief Defective instead of Chief Detective, the sole purpose of which seems to be so that when Polly's relatives place a missing person advert in the newspaper and Sabrina's friends do the same neither recognises that they are the same person.

Overall, a pleasant read but not one of my favourites by Milly Johnson.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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