Any Trope but You

A Novel

De: Victoria Lavine

Narrado por: Tim Paige, Jesse Vilinsky

A bestselling romance author flees to Alaska to reinvent herself and write her first murder mystery, but the rugged resort proprietor soon has her fearing she’s living in a rom-com plot instead in this earnestly spectacular debut by a stunning new voice.

Beloved romance author Margot Bradley has a dark secret: she doesn’t believe in Happily Ever Afters. Not for herself, not for her readers, and not even for her characters, for whom she secretly writes alternate endings that swap weddings and babies for divorce papers and the occasional slashed tire. When her Happily Never After document is hacked and released to the public, she finds herself canceled by her readers and dropped by her publisher.

Desperate to find a way to continue supporting her chronically ill sister, Savannah, Margot decides to trade meet-cutes for murder. The fictional kind. Probably. But when Savannah books Margot a six-week stay in a remote Alaskan resort to pen her first murder mystery, Margot finds herself running from a moose and leaping into the arms of the handsome proprietor, making her fear she’s just landed in a romance novel instead.

The last thing Dr. Forrest Wakefield ever expected was to leave his dream job as a cancer researcher to become a glorified bellhop. What he’s really doing at his family’s resort is caring for his stubborn, ailing father, and his puzzle-loving mind is slowly freezing over—until Margot shows up. But Forrest doesn’t have any room in his life for another person he could lose, especially one with a checkout date.

As long snowy nights and one unlikely trope after another draw Margot and Forrest together, they’ll each have to learn to overcome their fears and set their aside assumptions before Margot leaves—or risk becoming a Happily Never After story themselves.

©2025 Victoria Lavine (P)2025 Simon & Schuster Audio

Better Than The Title

This book was fun from the beginning and while the story was somewhat predictable, there were many twists and turns that kept my interest and added to the depth of the story. Steamy sex scenes!

Funny, easy read

I really enjoyed this book and laughed out loud many, many times. It is a predictable rom-com, which is exactly what I was looking for.

I thought the narration was good. It is dual narration, but I didn’t mind either of their opposite gender voices.

Overall, I would recommend this book.

Off Grid Romance

✩ 3 stars ✩

What to Expect:
➼ Forced Proximity
➼ Dislike-to-Love
➼ Meet Cute
➼ Slow Burn
➼ Grumpy x Grumpier
➼ Jaded Author FMC x Doctor/Medical Researcher MMC
➼ Off the Grid Alaskan Hotel Setting
➼ Only One Tent
➼ Chronically Ill Family Members
➼ Dual Narration
➼ Dual First Person POV

After the FMC is burned by cancel culture, Margot’s sister stages somewhat of an intervention and books her a 6 month stay in a remote Alaskan resort. Margot is a romance author who is down on her luck and has lost faith in ever finding her own happily ever after when she meets Forest whose father owns the resort. They both see each other initially through the jaded lens of past betrayals and their meet cute quickly turns to dislike.

Being a romance author, Margot sees tropes everywhere and repeatedly calls them out, sometimes out loud. I wasn’t exactly surprised by the discussion of tropes considering the cover, but it was definitley over the top. I weeded my list down, but this book covered pretty much every trope you can imagine. Too many in my opinion.

There were some aspects of this plot that I found very unrealistic. My biggest issue was with the letters and the FMC’s quest to earn them. Forest was a complete stranger to her and her sister with plenty of his own personal issues to focus on. It was completely unrealistic for him to be managing her sister’s letters to the degree that he did. Based on his personality in the story, I just don’t believe he would have ever agreed to do all that. The only argument that can be made is that perhaps they really needed the business, but still, who would even ask all that of a stranger?

I was also bothered by the portrayal of the FMC as being a helpless and hapless damsel in distress that had basically never seen the outdoors but was also someone’s caretaker? She didn’t make sense to me at all. People in LA do also live in California where there is plenty of great hiking and beautiful places in nature that people come from all over the world to visit, yet the author is trying to tell me she’s basically never hiked? Even if she were an “indoor cat” as she said, she wouldn’t have been completely helpless. Is she just super out of shape or something? If not, the way both he and her sister spoke to her about completing activities was bizarre to me.

I also feel like she was portrayed as somewhat unintelligent. She doesn’t know what a flue is, she has no idea how to act around wild animals, she doesn’t notice that when she packs her tent, the tent itself is missing, she takes her hat off when it’s freezing and he told her not to, etc. I might have felt a little different if she had lived in NYC, but not LA. Maybe the worst for me was her doing a live feed in her underwear. Honestly, who does that? She definitely wasn’t an FMC I identified with.

Anyway, she just seemed super dense and like a liability which didn’t feel at all likely to me. Authors would be well read and have knowledge of lots of things after researching all their books. There were some odd lines here and there that bothered me too. Like when she has hypothermia he says “I told you not to sweat.” Like sir, how is she supposed to control her body’s reactions? Or in a spicy scene the author wrote “fists tugging in his chest hair.” 🤨 How hairy is this man that she can get a whole fist full of his chest hair? Is this meant to be attractive? At one point it says she starts dry humping him without realizing it… just lots of little lines like these throughout that had me curling my lip or scratching my head.

Was the caretaker subplot giving Munchausen’s for anyone else? 👀 Their family members were basically like, please go live your lives and leave us alone. 😅

This is a debut, and knowing that, I’d say this was a decent read. I think most people will overlook the things that bothered me about this one and enjoy it more than I did. I liked the second half of the book more than the first when the FMC stopped slipping up and making stupid mistakes left and right. I also thought the spice in chapter 21 was pretty well written even though it contained even more tropes. 👀 You’ll see… I suspect most people will rate this higher than me, so if it peaks your interest, I say go for it! I bet her next book will be even better.

Super cute story, super cringe narration

I really liked this story, I just wish I’d read it rather than listened to it. I always struggle a bit with female narrators doing male voices, but this gal was the worst I’ve ever heard. She made him sound like he was half asleep/mumbling/a really dull person. Which was SO different from the way the actual male narrator sounded, it was jarring. I physically winced along the way. I kept having to re-say the male dialogue in my head in a regular voice just to get through the scenes.

I wish all audiobooks with dual narration would just use the actual male/female voices when there is dialogue, no matter which POV you’re in! Abby Jimenez’s new book Say You’ll Remember Me does this and it was a breath of fresh air!

Boring!

I finally skipped a few chapters. Neverending tropes and I thought the main character was an idiot.

Interesting

I felt that the narrators, specifically the female when initiating the MMC(?) was very cringe 🫣

I liked the premise of this story but missed the mark for me

Some Many Tropes!

Any Trope but You is such a good listen! Jesse Villinsky & Tim Paige are great narrators for this book. Villinsky covers most of the narration which is no surprise since this is Margo's story. With their narrations, I was invested in Margo's story and her time in Alaska to regroup and reinvent herself after a livestream podcast gone wrong. Forrest, radiates “leave me alone” vibes. Jesse Villinsky is very good narrating Forrest's voice and Margo's annoyance when she discovers he is holding precious letters from her. I was so engrossed in this narration and in each trope appearing, Margo and Forrest and everything else that I was at the end before I knew it. I strongly recommend listening to this book!

Such a fun cute read

My Rating: ❤️❤️❤️❤️.5
Spice Meter: ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 Spicy. More than some in the genre.
Narration: ❤️❤️❤️❤️

In Short: The pining, the will they or won't they, the comedic exploration of all the tropes! An excellent debut by Victoria Lavine.

General Thoughts: I decided to read this one after seeing how many of my friends absolutely loved it, and it did not disappoint. This book was such a fun ride. Predictable at times, but I never mind that. I think some of the best books are predictable. I loved the characters and how the author explored so many layers to them. The plot and the story itself were so fun and well done. This is an excellent, cute read. Banter was bantering. Tension was tensioning. I loved it, and I can't wait to read more by her.

Romantic Tropes:
-dual pOV
-meet cute but not so meet cute
-grump and grumpier (who's secretely a softie)
-one tent
-snowed in
-dislike to love
-close proximity
-FMC who doesn't believe in love and HEA
-and on an on

What a sweet and beautiful story!

Truly loved this story so much. It was heartbreakingly sweet and I loved the author’s play with tropes. It’s clear she loves writing romance and Im hoping to read more from her in the future!

Cringy female narration

The female narrator reading the guy parts was so cringeworthy. Though the rest of the narration was good, this made me regret buying the audiobook.