Weddings are one of the happiest occassions in one's life--well, if you're the bride or groom of said wedding, usually. If you're the ex of the bride, or a stranger, the amount of fun you'll have is dependent on the relationship. Alexa Monroe and Drew Nichols know this all too well when they walk into the one wedding that changed their lives. Jasmine Guillory's The Wedding Date was an absolutely splendid read. Guillory's writing is so fun and warm, she writes about topics rarely talked about with tropes we've seen before with expert ease. Her characters are so easy to relate to that we can't help cheering for them. If you want a feel good read to kick off the new year, look no further than Jasmine Guillory's The Wedding Date, or any of her Wedding Date novels.
Jasmine Guillory is a lawyer, a graduate of Wellesley College and Stanford Law School, and a Bay Area native who lives in Oakland, California. She has been published in The Toast and The Hairpin, and has towering stacks of books in her living room, a cake for every occasion, and upwards of fifty lipsticks. She is the New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding Date and The Proposal. Visit her online at jasmineguillory.com and twitter.com/thebestjasmine.
Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. She's definitely not the spontaneous type. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's too hard to resist. Drew has never found it hard to meet women--or to know just when to leave them. But now, on the eve on his ex's wedding festivities, he's minus a plus-one . . . until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend. From the best man's toast to the bouquet toss, Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible. But before they know it, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkley, where she's the mayor's chief of staff--and neither of them can 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 . . .
Alexa Monroe is one of the most relatable protagonists that I've read this year. She's a powerful professional, she's ambitious and has amazing goals . . . but she's also self-conscious about her curvy body and full to the brim with anxieties that all women know all too well. After spending most of my life reading about skinny teenagers with predictable approaches to the same thing, Guillory's main character was like a breath of fresh air. It was like finally someone knows what it's like to be a woman--an actual woman. The parts of the book in her point of view were always relatable, and I truly felt like I knew her. I wish we could have gotten more of her backstory, and earlier on. I really wanted to know Alexa, know why she was anxious, to know what experiences led her to becoming the mayor's chief of staff. We get some of her backstory later on, and in a well-placed part of the book, and I was dying to get to that part, to understand why she loved her job as much as she does. Either way, I'm so glad that Guillory brought Alexa to life within the pages of this book. By the end of the novel, she's the kind of woman that I think we all want to be: confident in her own skin, successful because of her own hard work, and well loved.
At first, I was shocked when Guillory transitioned into Drew's point of view--I was so certain that this was Alexa's story, and that Alexa's voice was the only one we'd hear from. But Drew's point of view was so necessary to the story, unlike Jack's in One Day in December. Getting to hear from Drew oftentimes led to seeing the whole picture of this relationship: the feelings on all sides, why there was miscommunication, why a wedding date was so necessary in the first place. I wish we got more of his backstory, but I really enjoyed how Guillory showed him at the hospital often, too. I enjoyed watching his and Jack's + Jack's family's relationship progress as Drew was treating them. While Alexa was definitely a powerful, visible professional, getting to see Drew at work was something I felt like I wouldn't see in other romance novels. There were some parts of Drew's character that I didn't always enjoy. He always seemed to be yelling at Carlos when the guy was clearly just trying to help him, or not thinking before speaking. At important moments during the novel, this spoke to his privilege, and his inability to see things from Alexa's perspective, but he did grow a bit by the end. Being able to note that change was one of the most rewarding parts of his character. Nonetheless, I'm glad that we got to hear from him just as much as from Alexa--it made the story feel like theirs.
The romance between Alexa and Drew felt completely organic. It was so nice to fall into the trope of fake date, and to then watch the escalation grow naturally. All of a sudden, Drew was flying in from Los Angeles just for a hug, and when we looked back to see how this all started--a wedding!--it almost didn't feel real. That speaks so powerfully to Guillory's beautiful writing, to how she can suck us into this world, this relationship, and make it feel like it's happening to us or to one of our best friend's. Another one of my favorite parts about the romance between Alexa and Drew was how, when they were apart, some of the conversations they had with their friends paralleled one another. Alexa would be talking to Maddie about how to act, and across the state Drew and Carlos would be talking about the same thing. It was super fun to read those moments, to realize that people are literally just people hoping for the same things without knowing how to share. I enjoyed those moments too because they made me smile. Guillory's writing is simultaneously comforting and heartbreaking, truthful and hilarious.
I know that I will be checking out more of Jasmine Guillory's writing! If you want to as well, find her at jasmineguillory.com, and sign up for her baking and writing newsletter!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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