Amazon.ca:Customer reviews: Happiness for Beginners: A Novel

Top positive review

A different twist to a romanic outdoor tale!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 8, 2022

I liked the plot it wasn’t a regular romantic story it had some twists in it to make it more interesting. Her characters were well done. However, the writing could have been more developed, found some places a little thin. On the whole I liked the book.

Top critical review

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MizRen.

Well written novel

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 27, 2023

Good book, I liked all the characters, just the story didn't go deep enough for me. Wilderness trip seemed to short.

2,457 total ratings, 225 with reviews

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From Canada

MizRen.

Well written novel

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 27, 2023

Verified Purchase

Good book, I liked all the characters, just the story didn't go deep enough for me. Wilderness trip seemed to short.

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TA Smith

A different twist to a romanic outdoor tale!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 8, 2022

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 6, 2023

A total joy, with a fantastic setting, a delightful cast of characters, a hot, pining-for-you-forever love interest, and a thoughtful look at the complexities of happiness. I think one of the things I enjoy so much about Katherine Center's books is that I find the central questions the heroines struggle with so relatable, yet those struggles are balanced with humour and fantastic friendships and swoony love stories, so the struggles never feel as bogged down in negative feelings as they do in real life. In this one, the heroine is desperate for an epiphany that will change her life. Naturally, she's the one who needs to change, and the changes she needs to make are so small, and yet so difficult after years of learned behaviours. Boy, do I get it. I also enjoy the way Center makes me care so much about the side characters, whether it's a group of sexist firemen that gradually learn to become at least somewhat less sexist, or a group of naive hikers we know from first introduction are going to grow on the us the same way they'll grow on the unimpressed heroine. Also: a quirky dog, scrabble jokes, a thematic and also funny thread about nicknames, and plenty of Big Feels, from first chapter to final page.

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Kt2

So fun!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 26, 2018

Verified Purchase

Great adventure story in life and love! Take risks, remember the good, and find happiness! And always listen to Grandma!

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the chef's wife

Loved it

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 3, 2019

Verified Purchase

Humorous quick read - light but entertaining.

One person found this helpful

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Jenelle Johnstone

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 30, 2016

Verified Purchase

A great summer book. I loved the characters. Read it in a day. Couldn't put it down.

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DG Buyer

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 7, 2018

Great Book!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 1, 2016

Verified Purchase

Great easy read!

Helpful

A must-read!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 11, 2015

Helen is 32 and has been divorced from a man who loved drinking more than he loved her for a year now, and she knows that it's time for her to be strong and to move on with her life. Knowing that she needs to do something symbolic in order to get past everything that happened, she signs up for a three week wilderness survival course- one that doesn't have the best reputation for actual survival.

Discovering that her younger brother Duncan's annoying best friend is also coming on the trip, and that somehow she has been volunteered to drive him to Wyoming where the course is taking place, changes her mind about the trip. She's sure that it will now be nothing short of a disaster. But what she finds is something entirely different- perhaps it will be on the brink of disaster that she can finally find happiness again.

I picked up Happiness for Beginners and started to read it....and then I couldn't put it down. I became caught up in the story of Helen- prickly on the outside but genuinely a person who wants to be loved despite that. I loved Josh, Duncan's best friend, from the very beginning as well. It's hard not to. He's charming and sweet to Helen, and he seems to only see the best in her despite her guarded nature. As we delve deeper into the story and we discover what tragedy Helen has been through, and what secret Josh is hiding, I liked both characters even more.

Katherine Center has created endearing secondary characters too, and although I liked almost none of Helen's survival group at the beginning of the story, by the end I found them all to be entertaining or interesting in some way. Center's absorbing writing kept me reading page after page, long after it was time for me to put the book down. Most interesting to me was how Center got me thinking about happiness, and about what truly makes me happy in life. That message was there, but not in a hit-you-over-the-head preachy way, and I appreciated that even more. It was subtle but enlightening.

Happiness for Beginners was a satisfying story of one woman's quest to find herself, and her own happiness, after a painful divorce. It wasn't the first book that I've read by Center and it certainly won't be the last. It was enjoyable to the last page, and I thank the publisher for providing me with a copy for review.

One person found this helpful

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jessica caines

One Star

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 19, 2015

Verified Purchase

Just couldn't get into it. It seemed a bit juvenile.

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5 star		61%
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Happiness for Beginners: A Novel

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