Jennifer E. Smith Books In Order

Publication Order of This Is What Happy Looks Like Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Picture Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Jennifer E. Smith is a children’s fiction and young adult author that is best known for her “This is What Happy Looks Like” series of novels.
For Jennifer, writing is something she cannot remember not doing. For as long as she can remember, she has loved telling stories that she would scribble in notebooks and journals.

From very early on, she knew she wanted to pursue writing even if she never considered it a proper career. During her childhood, she thought growing up and becoming a professional author was as likely as becoming an astronaut or ballerina.

As such, she is incredibly lucky to find herself a professional author. Still writing s something that she would still have loved doing even if she never got published.

Her first ever piece of writing was when she penned a short story about a horse and a girl when she was in the fourth grade. She would end up winning a creative writing contest held by her school and got a confidence boost for her writing skills.

For her win, she got to travel to a writing workshop held at the University of Illinois, which is where she really caught the writing bug.

Smith got started in the publishing world soon after graduation. After she graduated from New York’s Colgate University, she found a job working in New York City for a literary agency.

The work would prove pivotal in helping her achieve her dream of becoming a fiction author. At the agency, she got to go through many volumes of adult literary fiction and she got sick of it.

She just wanted to go into another genre and this is what led her toward adult books. It helped a lot that she had been a huge reader n the adult genre having read the likes of Bridge to Terabithia and Where the Red Fern Grows, which were some stories she wanted to emulate.

“The Comeback Season,” which was the first work that she published in 2008 was born out of her love for baseball.

She had been watching a Cubs game on television when she first had the idea for her novel. Within a few minutes, she had the first two paragraphs written and within four months she had finished penning the entire draft.

From there, Smith was convinced that she had to stick to young adult fiction, and the more she wrote, in the genre the more she was hooked.

Following the publishing of “The Comeback Season,” Jennifer E. Smith attended the Scotland-based University of St. Andrews, where she got her master’s degree in Creative Writing.

It was a great time as she had all the time to focus on writing and also engage in traveling. Upon returning to New York, she got back to publishing but working as an editor.

She found that she loved working as an editor and had to write her fiction during the weekends and in the evenings.

Jennifer’s experiences studying abroad and traveling across Europe have provided her with a lot of perspectives just like they do for her characters.
While she loves being an editor, she has asserted that she is still on a journey as a writer of young adult novels. Smith now has more than dozen works to her name including a series and several single-standing works in the young adult genre.

When she is not writing her bestselling novels, she can often be found guest blogging on a variety of young adult sites, making school visits, and doing local readings to promote her works.

Jennifer likes to call her work as a writer “homework,” since she still works a day job as an editor. She loves that she gets to write YA fiction by night and edit manuscripts for adult literary fiction during the day.

Jennifer E. Smith’s novel “This is What Happy Looks Like” opens with Ellie getting an email from a random stranger online. He had typed the wrong address accidentally and the two strike up a conversation over three months.

They never reveal their identities but Ellie finds it so easy to open up to her about the deepest things about her life that not even her closest friends are privy to.

The mysterious nature of their relationship always has Ellie looking forward to each chat with a mixture of thrill and excitement.
What she does not know is that the charming and funny stranger is a teen heartthrob and national movie star Graham Larkin.

The latter somehow gets his team to set his next film filmed in the small sleepy town of Henley, Maine which is Ellie’s hometown.
All he wants is to at least meet Ellie or if that is not possible get a glimpse of her. But Ellie does not like the attention, as he believed she would.
It turns out that she has many secrets she is hiding that would ruin her mother’s and her own quiet life in small-town Maine irreparably.

It is a cute story with some hiccups and challenges along the way that has an unexpected ending.

“Happy Again” by Jennifer E. Smith is a short novella that follows Graham and Ellie whose story begins in the first of the series.

The work is set a few months following the events of the debut after the lead protagonists promised to stay in contact.

But in this work, it does seem that both are moving on with their lives. Ellie has recently enrolled in college and Graham has gone back to making blockbuster movies while trying to maintain a low profile.

When the two unexpectedly find themselves in New York at the same time fate intervenes. Will they be able to get the happily ever after they both crave or has too much water passed under the bridge of their relationship?

Readers will love seeing Graham and Ellie as they embark on interesting stages of their lives. With more time passing without seeing each other, it is beautiful seeing their spark reignite when they once again come together through a stroke of luck.