Happy All The Time by Laurie Colvin tells the story of Guido and Vincent, third cousins and best friends, and of Holly and Misty, the two women they eventually meet and marry. Character-driven stories are great, even better if the book’s really all about personal relationships.  It’s not only romantic relationships, one of the most delightful minor arcs is between hardworking Misty and the wealthy dilettante who owns the company and indulges his whims in managing her department.

The novel is all about people interacting with each other. There’s almost no tension in this book, mostly we watch people going about their lives and making the sort of minor choices that lead to larger outcomes, and understanding or misunderstanding each other. The tone reminded me of a Maeve Binchy novel, if all the characters were wealthy Manhattanites, that is.

I love stories about developed characters and personal relationships, and in this novel, there was almost no plot to distract from the personalities in the book. Instead of tension and drama with manufactured arguments and reconciliations, this was just a gentle rumination on why we fall for the people we love, and how relationships grow and change.

Happy All The Time is hardly a dramatic page-turner, but it’s still really hard to put it down.