Happiness Below

by Erika Mathews

"For me? Why?"
“Because you looked sad, and sunflowers make you happy.”

After his mother's death, Josiah Brannon is convinced that God is not love. Abigail Lawton has only one dream: to preserve the happy cohesiveness of her rapidly-changing family life. As their paths intersect time and again amidst earthly life's sobering challenges, how can two ordinary lives discover true happiness below?

Genres: Romance, Christian Fiction

15 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 29, 2018

Reviews

[Angie Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweet short story about finding true happiness, told in a series of vignettes. The time skips threw me a little at first but didn't really bother me by the end, only I'd have liked some more explanations on certain details. Very good message.

[Katja Labonté · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars. This was a sweet, inspiring story about finding happiness and choosing joy—very short but very good! Josiah and Abby were so nice :)

[Erika Mathews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm thrilled to present this sweet story with an old-fashioned tone and a theme that is common to many of us.

[Hanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick reads are always nice, when accompanied by a nice spiritual lesson and reminders of biblical promises. For 13 pages, though, there was a lot of information to cram in, a lot of time that passed (there was a lot of time-hopping that wasn't made clear), and a sub-par job of establishing the setting. Because of the time-hopping, though, it almost seemed that the characters changed, even though their names remained the same.

[R.M. Archer · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

I found the time jumps awkward to follow and the relationship between the two characters felt stilted/imbalanced with only the information we're given. (How much of an age gap was there between them? Did Abby come to truly reciprocate Josiah's feelings?)

As a note of more personal taste, it was very Scripture-heavy; while this is obviously not an inherently bad thing, it was done in Happiness Below in a way that didn't feel entirely natural from the characters but rather like the author was making a point through them like puppets instead of through organic character development. This was another consequence, I think, of the story being so condensed.

Overall, it's not a bad story, it just felt incomplete and a bit flat to me in the exceptionally small space it was given.

[Rebekah Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars
This short story had a good message.
I did find it a bit hard to connect with the characters probably because there were so many jumps in the story. There were also a few things that left me wondering. But it was still good, and I enjoyed reading it.

[Andrea Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure I buy a romance that began at fifteen and eightish respectively, without more page time for the relationship to grow. However, this was a very cute story. I loved that the characters reminded one another to seek joy and happiness. The symbolism of the sunflower was well played.