Better Than the Movies is a young adult rom-com by Lynn Painter. The New York Times Best Seller is about Liz Buxbaum and her journey of trying to make Michael, her crush, like her back. He only sees her as the little girl he knew before he moved away, so she hatches a plan to show him that she has grown up since they were kids.
Wes Bennett is Liz’s greatest enemy and neighbor. After striking an impossible-to-turn-down deal, Liz convinces Wes to help her look more “grown-up” in Michael’s eyes.
Long story short, Liz ends up falling in love with Wes, and she finds out Wes has been in love with her since they were kids. He said to her, “I fell in love with teasing you in the second grade when I first discovered that I could turn your cheeks pink with just a word.”
Readers everywhere were swooning at that, smiling and kicking their feet because he loved her back and had just been waiting for her. The only thing that would make this book better would be if it were a dual point-of-view (POV).
Luckily, Painter heard the fans’ prayers and came through with chapters in Wes’s POV. In the novel, there are specific scenes that fans thought were monumental to the Liz/Wes relationship, so Painter wrote those scenes in his POV for her amazing readers.
The most recent release was Sept. 19, and it was the basketball scene through Wes’s eyes. In the 23-page long PDF download, Wes’s jealousy almost slips through many times, and Painter really shows how much Wes likes Liz through this chapter.
As readers remember from Better Than the Movies, when Liz gets hit in the face with a basketball, Wes rips his shirt off to catch the blood from her nose while Michael just stands there and laughs at the situation. This, in general, shows that Wes was the better option than Michael, but readers had to wait for Liz to figure it out, too.
There are a total of five extra chapters for the readers, and they’re adding to the general love for Wes. If someone has read Better Than the Movies, these bonus chapters are a must-read, too.
