A big fat funny wedding romp.
Two people bring fake dates to a wedding but only have eyes for each other in Hart’s comical romance.
Nora meets Sebastian when he comes into the bookstore where she works. She really likes him, but just when he’s about to ask her out, her friend and boss Benji arrives at the store. Benji is in some trouble with his family; Nora pretends to be his girlfriend to get him out of it. This ruse gets her invited to a family wedding as Benji’s plus-one (“We were so worried the wedding photos would be unbalanced. We thought he’d be the only single Ferraro, sullen in the back of every portrait”). Sebastian, meanwhile, is taking some time away from his job opening Boys and Girls Club chapters around the country to help out his grandmother. His best friend Alessia’s brother is getting married, and Alessia asks Sebastian to be her fake date to the wedding. (It turns out that all of these characters are going to the same nuptials.) Sebastian realizes pretty quickly that Nora and Benji are faking their relationship, and his friend, Alessia, gives away their game, too. What follows is a farce in which both fake couples have to keep up the con, even though Nora and Sebastian both really like each other. Not all is well; the feud brewing between the bride and groom’s families threatens to blow up the wedding, and Sebastian tells Nora he’s about to move to another state for work. This is a fun take on the fake-dating trope. Sebastian is a do-gooder who seems a little too good to be true, but both he and Nora are engaging, likable protagonists, and the chemistry between them is off the charts. The bride and groom’s families are involved in a Montague/Capulet-level rivalry, and everyone involved comes from big, nosy Italian families, adding depth to the story with a lot of quirky side characters and complicated interpersonal dynamics. The dialogue is zippy and clever, too. Overall, it’s a light, amusing read.
A big fat funny wedding romp.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781649376510
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
Rowell delivers the requisite happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t quite satisfy.
A second-chance romance from the author of Slow Dance (2024) and the Simon Snow Trilogy.
Cherry is fat. There are other things to know about Cherry, but this fact is essential to how she sees herself and—she knows—essential to how other people see her. And now that her husband’s hugely popular webcomic is a movie, she not only has to endure people confusing her with the character that’s based on her, but also the knowledge that the actor playing this character is wearing a fat suit. This pain is exacerbated by the fact that her marriage is over. It’s at this rock-bottom moment that her college crush reenters her life…This is a book about being fat, and Rowell does a great job of depicting what internalized fatphobia looks like. “Cherry was so used to thinking about being fat, she hardly even noticed that she was doing it. She was so used to thinking about being fat, she never thought about it.” Observations like this will resonate with a lot of readers, as will Cherry’s complicated feelings about weight-loss drugs. This is also a romance and, as a romance, it’s kind of all over the place. It’s totally realistic for Cherry to wonder if Russ—the guy from college—never pursued her because of her weight. This is a conflict that feels true. What’s less believable is the way he reacts when he sees a trailer for Cherry’s husband’s movie. It’s clear that he didn’t get that this movie was going to be a blockbuster. In short, Russ freaks out, and it’s not at all clear why. As for Cherry’s husband, the way she feels about him at the beginning of the book is totally disconnected from the way she feels about him in the novel’s latter half. It’s normal to have complicated feelings about the end of a marriage, of course, but there’s no emotional throughline to help the reader understand why Cherry’s feelings change so dramatically.
Rowell delivers the requisite happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t quite satisfy.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780063380264
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
