Happily Ever After: A Novel
New to the romance genre, Maxwell cleverly takes on its classic plotlines in this novel about an erotic-romance author whose fictional characters come to life. Sadie Fuller is a slightly frumpy divorced mom with an 11-year-old daughter, gay ex-husband, and a no-strings-attached weekly date with fun-but-flabby Jason. With K. T. Briggs as her pen name, she plumbs women’s wildest fantasies in her racy novels. Things get interesting when a strange passage appears in her latest manuscript, followed by the materialization of the hero, Aidan, at the local Target. Though Sadie is not sure how her fiction has become her reality, she sets out to help Aidan find his love interest, Lily, and break the spell cast by Clarissa, a witch Sadie created during her brief foray into paranormal romance. This light and funny contemporary tale is made even more interesting by how it subverts elements from popular erotic, paranormal-themed romance novels. Even the expected happy ending has a clever twist. --Aleksandra Walker