Getting to revisit a world that brings a reader a warm feeling they once gained from a book is hard to replicate. “Nothing Like the Movies,” the sequel to “Better Than the Movies” succeeds in the nostalgic aspect but also differs in a realistic aspect.
New York Times best-selling author Lynn Painter released the continuation of her first book “Better Than the Movies” earlier this month. The highly anticipated sequel was hard to get, as it sold out at almost all stores nearby.
The second book starts two years after the first ended, with the main character, Elizabeth (Liz) Buxbaum, and the love interest, Wes Bennet, happily in love after their endeavors to navigate going from childhood friends to enemies, back to friends, and finally lovers.
However, after devastating life events, including Wes’s long distance from college and hometown, and miscommunication, it is revealed that the couple had broken up. However, the real root of the reasons wasn’t revealed until further into the book.
Now, two years later, Wes is back at their college UCLA, and he is determined to win back Liz. But what happens when Liz reveals she wants nothing to do with him and that she has a boyfriend?
Well, Liz lies about having a boyfriend in an attempt to discourage Wes as a result of her heartbreak. Wes spends the rest of the book navigating how to get Liz to trust him and let him in again.
Having read the first book of this duo series, hearing about a sequel was exciting. Getting to indulge in the two characters’ story again is something not all readers get the pleasure of doing.
Plenty of discourse about the second book has been shared online, with positive regards, as well as a plethora of negatives. And, there were aspects of the book that were enjoyable, with only a couple of complaints. For starters, Liz’s friends from UCLA, including her fake boyfriend, were charming characters to read about. As well as the unpopular opinion of getting a different side of the two characters.
There were a lot of people who complained about how different the two felt, but the shift from who an individual was in high school to well into their college life is realistic and shows there was growth. Both Liz and Wes grew up in their own ways, which made the book feel more complex, compared to the first.
However, some aspects fell through in terms of how the miscommunication played into the plotline. It seemed like a lot of their problems could have been avoided had Wes apologized and Liz heard him out. The first 250 pages seemed to drag in terms of their connection, which left a shorter time for rekindling their romance toward the end.
Their miscommunication wasn’t unbearable though, like other romance books out there, it had just enough for early twenty adults, but kept it realistic, which was a breath of fresh air.
Toward the end of the book, once they had their angry love confessions and angsty moments, the journey of Wes being told Liz lied about her “boyfriend,” deciding to fight for her with a romantic act and finally winning a date, the highlight of the book was the ending.
When Wes and Liz are at a roadblock in their relationship due to Liz wanting to forget about their past and Wes not wanting that, Wes gets injured in one of his games. This evokes an emotional love confession from Liz that leads to their final reconciliation which ties the journey to an end.
Despite a slow start and occasional miscommunication issues, “Nothing Like the Movies” offers a contrasting and realistic continuation of Liz and Wes’s story that fans of the first book will appreciate.
