Here we are, at the end of Perkins' fun, modern romance series. Isla and the Happily Ever After marks our return to Paris. You'll remember both Isla and Josh from Anna and the French Kiss. Josh was St. Clair's slacker best friend. Isla helped Anna out of a jam, and is also memorable for the moon eyes she made at Josh. And their first interaction in Isla and the Happily Ever After, Isla happening upon Josh in a NYC cafe while she happens to be hopped up on pain meds from getting her wisdom teeth pulled. 
 As with Perkins' other novels, Isla offers up a lot of bittersweet moments wrapped up in the warmth of a fun, quippy tone. If your not paying attention, the depth of these characters will sneak up on you. Are they perfect? No. Do I often want to hit them over the head to make them recognize something I consider obvious? Yes. But, 1) I'm not living it, I'm observing from the outside and can see a lot you wouldn't in the eye of the storm. 2) Perkins makes me care enough to want to hit things. 
 Our characters get together fairly early here, and Perkins reminds us that what may have been "happily ever after" for her other characters, may be only the beginning of the story for others. This was hard because at times I wanted to scream "this is not a healthy relationship." But then I was like "calm down, that's the point." These are young characters discovering themselves they fit in the bigger world. They get to make mistakes (everyone does). This is a book about a relationship, but it's really about Isla accepting herself and her feelings. And Josh has to stop running away from things. 
 Also, in terms of the relationships in this series, I recognize that my views of romance have grown and changed. These are exceedingly mature romances for the young adult audience in terms of the ideas they present in such an accessibly way. Perkins never talks down to the passions of the teenage experience, while also being completely honest about how things play out. 
 All of this is fairly par for the course in terms of what I was expecting. What surprised me in the best possible way was when I realized that Perkins had written a realistic and relatable autistic character. I almost screamed from joy. Also because his being autistic was not the most important thing. It was a fact in his life, but first and foremost he was Isla's best friend. Was he on the more functional side of the autism spectrum, yes. But you don't get autistic characters too often, especially the way it's treated in Isla. 
 Finally, this novel wraps up the loosely tied together series well, even if one plot bit at the end made me go, "whaaaat? I don't know about that." Regardless, we get to see all our friends again, and the references throughout to the Olympics coming up was a fun way to connect back to Lola. After all, Josh and Isla's history with St. Clair and Anna already gave us that connection.