Kennedy Martin is shocked when her ex calls days before his wedding, expressing serious second thoughts. Doesn’t he see his fiancée’s actually the glaze to his doughnut? Now she’s got no choice but to crash his wedding and convince the man he’s with the right woman.
Instead, she crashes into the absolute last man she ever wanted to see: Maverick Owens, her old college nemesis. Maverick is still as awful, infuriating, and just The Worst as ever—even if he looks way too sexy in his cowboy hat. And of course he’s convinced she’s actually at the seaside ranch to ruin the wedding.
Now the only way to get some face time with the groom and save this marriage is to participate in all sorts of pre-wedding events…with Maverick. Stuck on a canoe, making small-talk at cocktail hour, and even a hoedown with her worst enemy? This just might be the longest week of her life…
Review:
OMG, loved!
Kennedy and Maverick’s enemies-to-lovers story was just wonderful! I will admit, I was a bit worried about the “wedding crasher” part of the book–I really hoped this wasn’t going to be a My Best Friend’s Wedding kind of situation (and no, of course I wasn’t worried enough to read the entire synopsis, why would I? I saw “Robin Bielman” and “cowboy” and said, yes, please–but that part of it, though it drew out a teensy bit longer than it really should have, was just fine. And of course it served its purpose, which was to bring Kennedy and Maverick together again, so…all good 😉
I loved watching Kennedy and Mav as they got to know each other again, getting to know each other for real for the first time and having to re-examine the “truths” that they thought they knew about one another for so long. Their story wasn’t nearly as fluffy as I expected it to be–Mav had a trauma in his past he wasn’t quite over yet (OMG, the letters at the end of the chapters!) and Kennedy had some relationship drama at the start and suffers her own traumatic event before the end–and honestly, my reactions while reading ran the gamut from swoons to LOL to a little light sobbing. So many feels!
The ending was a bit drawn out, but not unrealistically so–I kept looking at the time left in book marker, hoping Ms Bielman would end our mutual despair soon…
A few nit-picky things kept it from being a higher rating. One, the premise for getting and keeping Kennedy out there was, as previously mentioned, a bit iffy. Two, Kennedy at times seemed a little naïve for an ER doctor. (Would she really need *quite* so much explanation while watching puppies be born? Has she really had so little experience with death up to now that touched her personally?) Three, the series of events that kept them apart near the end was slightly heavy handed–even knowing that we know a little more about Mav’s past than Kennedy does at that point, would she really have interpreted his letter the way she did? Her younger sister didn’t… And would Mav really react that way to hers…? I’m not totally convinced.
Still, this was a lovely read and I was so, so happy with how it ended. Fingers crossed that we’ll see some more stories set in this universe, because I couldn’t help but notice there were a few singletons hanging out here and there… 😉
Rating: 4 stars / A-
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.