Title: The Wedding Date
Author: Jasmine Guillory
Genre: Contemporary romance
Blurb
A groomsman and his last-minute guest are about to discover if a fake date can go the distance in a fun and flirty debut novel.
Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's too hard to resist.
On the eve of his ex's wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend...
After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she's the mayor's chief of staff. Too bad they can't stop thinking about the other...
They're just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century--or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want...
This is a debut romance by an AOC with a Black heroine and while I found it mostly nice and sweet, I aslo had some issues with it.
It started really strong for me, the meet cute in the elevator and the fake date to a wedding both made me laugh and get invested in the characters. I liked the heroine from the start - she is smart, professionally successful, funny, a bit shy and she struggles with some insecurities re her weight and attractiveness, all of which made her feel real to me.
I quite liked the hero too, at least initially. He is nice, smart and equally successful professionally but terrible at personal relationships.
Things between them start as a joke but both develop feelings for each other pretty quickly. This is where the story and romance lost some of it strength for me. They start a long-distance relationship but both avoid talking about what was happening between them and where they wanted this thing between them to go. I found their interactions to be repetitive and the whole conflict was based on a couple of misunderstandings and hasty decisions which I was not all too happy about. They both acted like kids and made assumptions which were all wrong.
While I overall enjoyed the story, I had some issues with it. I can enjoy a fade-to-black sex scenes in my romances but here they came after rather explicit descriptions of foreplay and at least to me, they didn't really fit the story. Add to that the fact that the sex scenes were quite a few, all fade-to-black and over time they felt repetitive and at odds the tone of the story.
On the plus side, I liked the glimpses we got into the professional lives of Alexa and Drew, their circle of friends and colleagues, which gave fullness and further sense of realism to the romance.
In short, this is a nice romance, not too bad for a debut book. It has some really strong points - positive fat representation, POC heroine who is smart and successful, a hero who respects her and is not intimidated by her success but quite the opposite, he values her work and is proud of her success.
Review
This is a debut romance by an AOC with a Black heroine and while I found it mostly nice and sweet, I aslo had some issues with it.
It started really strong for me, the meet cute in the elevator and the fake date to a wedding both made me laugh and get invested in the characters. I liked the heroine from the start - she is smart, professionally successful, funny, a bit shy and she struggles with some insecurities re her weight and attractiveness, all of which made her feel real to me.
I quite liked the hero too, at least initially. He is nice, smart and equally successful professionally but terrible at personal relationships.
Things between them start as a joke but both develop feelings for each other pretty quickly. This is where the story and romance lost some of it strength for me. They start a long-distance relationship but both avoid talking about what was happening between them and where they wanted this thing between them to go. I found their interactions to be repetitive and the whole conflict was based on a couple of misunderstandings and hasty decisions which I was not all too happy about. They both acted like kids and made assumptions which were all wrong.
While I overall enjoyed the story, I had some issues with it. I can enjoy a fade-to-black sex scenes in my romances but here they came after rather explicit descriptions of foreplay and at least to me, they didn't really fit the story. Add to that the fact that the sex scenes were quite a few, all fade-to-black and over time they felt repetitive and at odds the tone of the story.
On the plus side, I liked the glimpses we got into the professional lives of Alexa and Drew, their circle of friends and colleagues, which gave fullness and further sense of realism to the romance.
In short, this is a nice romance, not too bad for a debut book. It has some really strong points - positive fat representation, POC heroine who is smart and successful, a hero who respects her and is not intimidated by her success but quite the opposite, he values her work and is proud of her success.
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