The Wedding Date

by Jasmine Guillory

[girlinthepages]

There's been so much buzz around The Wedding Date for months now that I was certain it'd be a perfect read for me: diverse, set in California, adult fiction (which I've been craving more and more of these days). etc. I'm also 100% obsessed with all things wedding related since I'm in the midst of planning my own wedding, so I was thrilled to see the protagonists meet and bond over a ritzy San Francisco wedding. Unfortunately, The Wedding Date completely missed the mark for me, and has fallen to the bottom of my list of 2018 reads so far.

At its core, The Wedding Date has a cute and predictable premise: two strangers have a meet cute, decide to pose as a couple at a wedding, and then fall in love for real. It's definitely been the plot of many a movie in some way, shape or form and I was expecting a light, fun tale (bonus points once I found out the couple was comprised of a doctor and ex lawyer/successful political business women- total power couple!) It was also set in my beloved Bay Area, so there were 100 reasons why this book should have worked for me. However, it fundamentally missed the mark because I found I just did not connect with ANY of the characters. It lacked depth and the dialogue (especially at the beginning) felt almost like I was reading fan fiction. While I was expecting something light and fluffy, this read was almost too much so, and was weighed down by the classic, terrible trope of miscommunication- 90% of the issues in the book could have been avoided if the characters had just TALKED to each other. It's frustrating enough to read scenarios like that in YA when you can at least excuse the characters for being so dense because they are in high school. However, there's really no excuse for characters who are grown adults.

Alexa and Drew's relationship also felt like it didn't have a lot of growth. While I was happy to see that the book extended past the wedding weekend (so I wasn't expected to believe ~true love~ could happen in 48 hours), when they were together every weekend for the next month or so, all they did was eat food, be intimate, and not tell each other important things. I know they were in the honeymoon phase of a new relationship and all that, but it was so predictable and boring after a while. I honestly was so much more interested in Drew and Alexa as individuals and enjoyed the portions of the novel that focused on their careers significantly more than I did any passages about their relationship (or pining for each other, usually after a big drama that could have completely been avoided with like a two minute conversation).

While the book didn't work for me overall, there were some highlights- it was made very clear that Alexa had more of a normal/curvy body type, it showed a positive relationship with food (donuts especially) and it didn't shy away from discussing race or uncomfortable situations, and of course featured an interracial relationship. I felt like the bones of a good story were there, but the dialogue, repetitious plot happenings, and overall cheesiness outweighed the positives for me in this story, big time.

Overall: The Wedding Date is my biggest 2018 release letdown so far. I had to push myself to finish it and I became frustrated quickly with the lack of communication trope that became the foundation for the plot. Some good basic elements to this story, but the execution fell very, very short for me.This review was originally posted on Girl in the Pages