Review: Awkwardly Ever After (Smith High, #4) by Marni Bates

It's prom season at Smith High School and love is in the air. . .for some people.

Melanie Morris knows she shouldn't keep flirting with her best friend's brother, Dylan Wellesley, even though the last thing she feels is "sisterly" around the cute soon-to-be freshman. But attending prom with somebody else might mean losing him for good. . .

Isobel Peters accepts the fact that she's a huge geek, but she never expected renowned player, Spencer King, would want to get his hands on. . .her reputation. What begins as a bargain could turn into something real--or a Notable disaster!

Corey O'Neal is dating the boy of his dreams, rockstar Timothy Goff. But it isn't easy to trade in anonymity for instant celebrity status, especially now that swarms of protesters want them both banned from prom. Dating Prince Charming in real life is a whole lot harder than it sounds in fairytales.

Happily ever after? Try awkwardly ever after!

Awkwardly Ever After sounded like it was going to be an adorable finale to this cutely awkward series, but sadly, it wasn’t. I liked how it was following the supportive characters, and giving three of them their happy endings, but none of the three stories actually impressed me. The first two felt too young for me, and the third just missed the mark entirely.

The first part of Awkwardly Ever After is Melanie’s story. She’s had a crush on Mackenzie’s younger brother Dylan for awhile, but doesn’t think she can date him because of “Girl Code.” Then Mackenzie tries to set her up with one of her boyfriend’s friends, and it just doesn’t work out, since her heart is elsewhere. I did think this part was really cute, but it felt too young for me. Melanie is a freshman and Dylan is in middle school. I can totally understand why that relationship would seem awkward at first, but it doesn’t really go into it much. Nor do they ever talk to Mackenzie about their feelings for each other, even though she was one of the main obstacles of them being together. It was essentially a “I like you. I like you, too. Let’s kiss.” type tale, without much else. Melanie’s father’s alcoholism is brought up, but again, it never really amounts to anything.

The middle portion of Awkwardly Ever After switches to Melanie’s BFF, and picks up right where the first part left off: with Isobel, queen of the geeks, stuck with Spencer, king of the notables. I really liked the beginning of this part, since Isobel essentially gives Spencer a full psychoanalysis. She picks that boy apart! And, of course, she’s right about everything. He’s trying to lose some popularity to not get voted prom king, so faking dating a geek! Kind of. Actually, I don’t even know what direction this the story took, and was quite confused. Isobel offers to be his friend not girlfriend, but then they’re fake dating for like a day, but then they’re for real dating. I don’t know. It was kind of jumbled.

Sadly, Corey and Tim’s story was my least favorite part of Awkwardly Ever After. I was expecting more from them, since they’ve been featured in every book. The press is going crazy over them attending prom together, since Tim just came out. Of course, the school is having some concerns about it too, which is natural. Unfortunately, the author tried to turn a non-issue into a social justice issue and it just didn’t make sense. Especially since one detail was completely glossed over, which was a missed opportunity to point out a double standard! Without the aforementioned issue, there could have been a great story about Corey having doubts about dating a rock star and still feeling hurt over Tim denying being gay in the first place. Those things do come up, but I was too annoyed by the rest of it to fully care.

In the end, Awkwardly Ever After was an awkward read, but not in a fun way. It had its cute moments, but overall, I feel like all of these characters were robbed. Good ideas and storylines were presented but none of them were fully realized. All three of these could have easily been their own full-length book, and that’s probably what should have been done instead of condensing them into just a few pages each.

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