Estranged exes must stick close together to save their best friend’s wedding after a string of disasters in this swoony and steamy second-chance romance from the USA Today bestselling author of You, with a View.
Georgia Woodward lives by her lists, none more so than the one about her ex, Eli Mora. It’s full of the ironclad dos and don’ts they’ve been following since she returned to the Bay Area after their cataclysmic breakup five years ago.
With the wedding of their mutual best friend, Adam, looming, and them about to step into their roles as best woman and man, Georgia’s never needed it more. She refuses to threaten their tight-knit friend group with her messy—and still very present—feelings. The rules on that list will keep her cool, calm, and compartmentalized.
What’s not on her list? Eli arriving from New York with a new rule-breaking attitude or the all-inclusive venue burning to the ground, leaving the bride and groom in dire straits. Nor does she anticipate Adam asking her and Eli to help him make a miracle happen. Together.
As Georgia and Eli rush up to Napa Valley to pull off the perfect wedding, their old chemistry comes back in technicolor. Somewhere between cake tastings gone wrong, disastrous DJ auditions, and Eli’s heated attention, Georgia starts recognizing the man she fell in love with before. And if she lets herself break her rules, she might find what they’re building isn’t the something old that ruined them—it’s a chance at something new.
Excerpt:
To the untrained eye, this text probably looks like a joke, or the beginning of one of those chain emails our elders get duped into forwarding to twenty of their nearest and dearest, lest they inherit multigenerational bad luck.
In actuality, it’s been Adam’s mantra for the past eight months.
Adam is the brother I never had and I’m truly honored to be along for the ride on his wedding journey. But had sixth-grade Georgia anticipated I’d be fielding forty-seven daily texts from my more-unhinged-by-the-minute best friend, I would’ve thought twice about complimenting his Hannah Montana shirt the day we met.
My Spidey senses tingle with this text, though. It hasn’t been delivered in aggressive caps lock, nor is it accompanied by a chaotic menagerie of GIFs (my kingdom for a Michael Scott alternative). Whatever has happened now might actually be an emergency.
Then again, the wedding is ten days away. At this point, anything that isn’t objectively awesome is a disaster.
I pluck my phone off my desk, typing, What’s the damage?
A bubble immediately pops up, disappears, reappears, then stops again.
“Great sign.”
It’s nearly four p.m. on Wednesday, the day before my week-long PTO for the wedding starts, and I still have half a page of unchecked boxes on my to-do list, plus a detailed While I’m Away email to draft for my boss. I can’t leave Adam hanging in his moment of need, though. What kind of best woman would I be?
No better than the largely absent best man? comes the uncharitable punchline. I slam the door on that thought. It’s not like I’ve minded executing most of the best-people activities; it’s been a godsend for multiple reasons. It’s just so typical of him to-
I catch my own eye in the computer’s reflection, delivering a silent message with the downward slash of my dark eyebrows: Shut. Up. I’d rather think about curses than anything tangentially related to the subject of Eli Mora.
Not that I believe in curses at all.
Except . . . deep down, I do worry that Adam’s been hounded by bad vibes since he proposed to his fiancée, Grace Song, on New Year’s Eve. Their plans have involved a comedy of errors that have escalated from bummer to oh shit: the wrong wedding dress ordered by the bridal salon, names misspelled on their printed wedding invitations twice, and-the one that nearly got me to believe-their wedding planner quit three months ago because his Bernedoodle had amassed such a following on social media that he was making triple his salary as her manager.
For Adam, whose natural temperament hovers somewhere near live wire, it’s been a constant test of his sanity. Even Grace, who’s brutally chill, the perfect emotional foil for Adam, has been fraying.
But then, she would’ve been fine eloping. Every new disaster probably only further solidifies the urge to book it to Vegas.
Adam’s texts tumble over one another:
Georgia
Our fucking DJ
BROKE THEIR HIP
LINE DANCING AT A BACHELORETTE PARTY
IN NASHVILLE
I need to know what I’ve done in my 28 years on this dying earth that is causing this to happen
I start to type, but he beats me to it.
That was rhetorical, Woodward, DON’T
Clearly Adam’s shifting out of his panic fugue, so I shift into fix-it mode. It’s the reason he came to me out of everyone-he knows I’ll step up without hesitation.
Deep breath. Nothing’s burned to the ground, right? I text back. This is problematic but not fatal. We’ll come up with a new list.
The bubbles of doom pop up again and I wait. Again.
I wish I could say my eagerness to jump into this shitstorm is fully altruistic, but since I got back from a six-month work stint in Seattle three months ago, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen Adam, all wedding-related. This has been the only way to reliably stay in his orbit.
For now, anyway.
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Excerpted from The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce Copyright © 2024 by Jessica Joyce. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Review:
OMG, the PAPER RINGS.
That’s it. That’s the review.
(Just kidding. BUT IT COULD BE, BECAUSE OMG, THE PAPER RINGS.)
The Ex Vows made me an absolute sloppy mess. (Apparently, this is a Pisces trait, or so this book has informed me?) There was an awful lot of snort laughing at the beginning, which shifted into not a little aggravation around the middle (we only get Georgia’s POV and it’s obvious that there’s a lot going on with Eli that she’s too afraid to ask him about and instead is filling in the blanks herself–for a while there I was terrified that this was going to turn into Happy Place part 2, but thankfully it didn’t).
The day of Adam and Grace’s wedding was a train wreck I couldn’t look away from, but it had me sobbing and laughing (and laugh-sobbing) before it was over and then the last 25% of the book? I don’t even have words. All the feels. So. Many. Feels. Thank goodness I’d already taken off my makeup for the day 😉
I’ve always been a second chance romance can *maybe* work, if given the right circumstances kind of girl, and good golly are THESE the right circumstances.
Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.
About the author:
Jessica Joyce lives happily-ever-ongoing with her husband and son in the Bay Area. When she’s not writing character-driven, realistic and relatable tales of millennials who are just Doing Their Best while falling in love, you can find her listening to one of her dozens of chaotically curated Spotify playlists, trying out a new skincare face mask, crying over cute animal TikToks, or watching the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice.