52 pages • 1 hour read
Lynn PainterNothing Like the Movies
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 28-33Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 28 Summary: “Liz”
After visiting Emerson Field, Wes, Michael, Liz, and Lilith head back to the hotel before meeting up with the rest of their group and friends at Nicola’s for dinner. Clark rides with Sara and her mom. Before everyone parts ways, Clark takes Liz aside and tells her that he doesn’t want to pretend to be her boyfriend anymore because he feels like he’s hurting Wes. Liz pushes back, but they don’t resolve the issue before leaving. Outside the restaurant, Liz thinks about what happened with Wes the night before. She observes him with their old school friends who’ve met them for dinner. She feels grateful that he still has people close to him.
Dinner goes well until Liz and Wes’s friends start asking about their breakup. Liz’s best friend, Joss, alludes to the New Year’s when Wes ended things, and Liz gets upset. After dinner, Clark confronts Liz again. He makes a show of ending their fake relationship. He then explains that he learned more about what happened to Wes after Stuart’s death when he was riding with Sarah and her mom. He recorded their conversation and gives the recording to Liz. Liz listens to it. In the car, Wes’s mom told Clark that Wes blamed himself for Stuart’s death because Stuart had a heart attack shortly after the call, in which Wes told him that he didn’t want him at the game. She insisted that it wasn’t his fault, but Wes took on the emotional stress. He was also working two jobs to pay the mortgage and bills because she “was dealing with [her] own PTSD” (284).
Liz is overcome by emotion after listening to the recording. She confronts Wes outside the restaurant and asks why he didn’t tell her about everything he was going through at the time. He admits that he didn’t want to burden her while she was trying to have a normal college experience. He admits that he knew he had to break up with her when she decided not to attend her hero Jack Antonoff’s industry event to talk to him on FaceTime. He didn’t want her to miss out on opportunities because of him.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Wes”
Wes continues to explain that he kept telling himself to end their relationship but always got too caught up in his feelings when he and Liz talked on the phone. That’s why he waited until New Year’s to end things between them. Two years prior, Liz visited Wes at his house on New Year’s Day. They’d already broken up, but she thought that they could get back together until she heard rumors at the New Year’s Eve party that Wes had been seeing Ashley when they were still together. Wes lied and said that he had been cheating on her and that it was best if they broke up.
Liz confronts Wes about cheating. Wes reveals that he never cheated on her and has always loved her. He only said that he’d cheated to convince Liz that they shouldn’t be together. Furious, Liz accuses Wes of “infantiliz[ing] [her] by assuming [he] knew best” (297). Sarah appears, interrupting their conversation and insisting that they have to leave soon. Liz leaves, and Wes and Sarah discuss what happened. Wes privately realizes that he feels better after the fight because Liz was upset about him and their relationship.
Chapter 30 Summary: “Liz”
Liz returns home. She goes to the Secret Area to think. Her dad finds her there and asks her about Wes. She tells him about everything that’s happened and explains that she’s confused about what she feels for Wes. Her dad reassures her, suggesting that she’s allowed to be undecided about her feelings for Wes. Liz feels much better. Her dad leaves, and Liz stays in the Secret Area, thinking. She considers everything that happened between her and Wes and how their relationship ended. She returns home and hangs out with Helena before they leave for the airport. Helena tells her how much she loves her and reminds her to visit more often.
A few days after Liz returns to California, Wes texts to say that he’s been thinking about her.
Chapter 31 Summary: “Wes”
Wes and his friend Mickey “break into the high school field down the street” and practice pitching while talking about Liz (311). Wes tells Mickey his plan to win Liz back with a big romantic gesture. Later on, they involve Wes’s other friends in his plan. He buys countless daisies, and his friends drive him to Liz’s apartment. He scales her balcony, where he starts displaying the flowers and lighting candles. Then, a neighbor sees him and accuses him of arson. The man begins to hose Wes down. He takes a video as Wes climbs off the balcony and falls into a bush. His friends also video the incident.
The next morning, Liz confronts Wes. She tells him that her neighbor told her someone was trying to light her balcony on fire and showed her a video of someone who looked like Wes climbing down and falling. Wes tries to act casual. Then, Liz reveals that she isn’t into this sort of romantic gesture anymore because she’s not the same girl. Wes is surprised but tells her that he’s going to try again.
Chapter 32 Summary: “Liz”
In the gym, Wes’s other friends press Liz about Wes’s gesture. They show her the footage they took of Wes, and she realizes that he was writing posters for her inspired by the movie Love Actually. The friends continue asking questions, wanting to know if she’ll go out with Wes. Liz dismisses their teasing.
Chapter 33 Summary: “Wes”
Wes talks to Sarah about what’s happening with Liz. She then gets his other friends on FaceTime so that they can discuss the matter together. Liz texts Wes while he’s talking to his friends. She asks why he wanted to give her flowers after their recent fight. He explains that he’s still in love with her and that their fight hasn’t changed his feelings. He ends his call with his other friends and calls Liz. He asks her to go on a date with him, and they make a deal. They’re both attending their classmate’s Halloween Ski Mask-erade party; Liz says that if Wes can find her in costume, she’ll go on a date with him.
Shortly after Wes hangs up with Liz, Helena calls him. She explains that the people who bought his old house found some vending machine toys in the closets that Sarah left behind. She wants to return them to him. She then shares her last memory of Stuart with Wes. The day before Stuart died, Stuart saw Helena in the driveway and noticed that she was upset. She’d just fought with Liz, and Wes hugged her. He reminded her that teenagers don’t always mean what they say when they’re upset and that she shouldn’t worry about her relationship with Liz. Helena assures Wes that Stuart wasn’t upset with him when he died. Wes thanks her for the story. That night, he sleeps well.
Chapters 28-33 Analysis
Liz’s and Wes’s experiences in Nebraska and California further their Personal Growth and Coming-of-Age Journeys while simultaneously propelling them toward healing and forgiveness. Their conversations and interpersonal encounters throughout this excerpt are particularly influential in this regard. Furthermore, as Liz and Wes begin to articulate their internal experiences, they learn how to balance their expectations with their ever-changing realities. The novel uses scenes of dialogue to show that Liz and Wes are leaning toward change. Liz’s conversations with Clark, Wes, Helena, and her dad help her reconsider what happened between her and Wes in the past and reflect on what she feels, wants, and needs in the present. Meanwhile, Wes’s conversations with Sarah, Liz, Mickey, AJ, and Helena encourage him to acknowledge his mistakes and heartbreak. The novel illustrates how love and support from one’s family and friends are essential to an individual’s Journey Toward Healing and Forgiveness. Indeed, as soon as Liz and Wes begin to speak up about what they are feeling and why, they receive the care and empathy they need to grow.
For Wes, personal growth means reconciling with the circumstances surrounding his father’s death. For two years, Wes’s life has been “all about grief and […] nothing to do with other emotions” (271). He has tried to dissociate from his relationships and experiences as a way to overcome his guilt and sorrow over his father’s death. Once he begins to share the truth of his shame and remorse with his loved ones, he realizes that Stuart’s passing might not have been his fault. He acknowledges his feelings and guilt to move beyond them. The same is true regarding his relationship with Liz. For years, he has let Liz believe the lie that he cheated on her. In Chapter 29, however, Wes finally admits that he “only said [he] cheated to get [Liz] to move on” (296). This admission is a sign of Wes’s personal growth. He confesses that he tried to take control of his and Liz’s relationship and Liz’s future as a way to protect her. Revealing the truth to Liz is just one way that Wes is Balancing Expectations and Reality. In the past, he tried to dictate Liz’s reality by lying to her. In the present, he is open, honest, and vulnerable so that she knows that he still loves her and understands what she can expect from him in the future. Wes’s conversation with Helena also helps Wes make peace with his past and forgive himself. Helena acts as a voice of reason and grants Wes needed perspective on his relationship with his late father.
For Liz, personal growth means admitting her confused feelings for Wes. Her conversation with her dad in the Secret Area marks a turning point in her development, which supports the theme of personal growth and coming-of-age journeys. While sitting with her dad in the secluded setting, Liz says, “I told him everything, then rambled to him about the way it was impossible for me to reconcile my feelings. I’d had two massive revelations that night, and each brought out opposing feelings. Every time I thought about poor Wes and what he’d gone through, my heart was broken for him. I was so sad for everything he’d lost and equally sad that he hadn’t been able to tell me. I felt like somehow I failed him, that obviously there was some reason he hadn’t been able to open up to me” (304).
Liz’s newfound ability to share these vulnerable thoughts and feelings with her dad is a sign of her personal growth and maturity. She is learning how to claim the more fraught aspects of her emotional experience and coming to terms with who she is as an individual. In turn, her dad receives her with grace and understanding. He encourages her to make peace with her feelings and stop berating herself for having complex emotions. As a result of her dad’s support, Liz can better balance the expectations of her relationship with Wes with the reality of how their dynamic is continuing to unfold. Through Liz’s and Wes’s realizations in these chapters, the novel underscores the importance of honesty and openness to healing broken relationships and establishing new, healthy dynamics with others.
Related Titles
By Lynn Painter
