The Best Man (Blue Heron, #1)

by Kristan Higgins

[Angie]

The Best Man does have a cute romance and story, but overall, I just couldn't enjoy it because of the problematic humor. Three years ago, Faith was jilted at the alter, when her boyfriend/fiance of 8 years comes out. She takes off on their honeymoon to San Francisco, where she decides to stay. But after much failure in the dating department, and then learning that some unacceptable woman is trying to pick up her father, Faith moves back to her small town. It's there where she's reunited with Levi, her ex's BFF, who she feels ruined what should have been the best day of her life.

The Best Man is an enemies to lovers romance. Faith and Levi have never gotten along, and after he encouraged Jeremy speak up during the "Speak now or forever hold your peace" portion of the wedding, she simply cannot stand him. Of course, she eventually comes to terms with the fact that he did do the right thing, but there's a ton of tension and hostility between them after their reunion. And I totally believed it! Even her offering him brownies from her grandmother sounded like a threat! It takes about half of the book before they start getting along, which was a bit too long, but I did enjoy them together once it happened.

However, I noticed something troubling about The Best Man early on. Most of Levi's chapters are actually about Jeremy's gayness at first. He flashes back to when they first met and he apparently pegged him for gay at first sight. His gaydar is so good that he knew before Jeremy did! Then he basically boasts about he was the only one to see it, and had to be the one to stop his best friend from entering a doomed marriage. Then there's Faith who didn't believe Jeremy was gay at first and starts listing all of the "straight" things about him. She was probably in shock, so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. Except that once she accepts it as true, she starts listing all of the "gay" things about him. Then throughout the book she categorizes everything Jeremy and Levi do as gay or straight, because apparently this needs to be done? And none of the "gay" things that Jeremy did had anything to do with being gay! Not even stereotypically! Like when he brings coffee to Faith's family when they're harvesting grapes in the cold. Oh yes, so gay...

Then there's Maxine, one of the women Faith is hoping to hook her dad up with. At least until she finds out that Maxine is a "she-male." Um, really? That word is grossly insensitive. And of course, being only in a handful of pages, we don't learn anything about her gender identity, but honestly, that doesn't even matter. Calling her a "she-male" and then stating "It's a boy" is completely unacceptable. Then a few chapters later while discussing Dad's dating mishaps, Maxine is referred to as "the transvestite." Add that to Faith's fixation on Jeremy's gayness and potential dates' gayness or straightness, and you get a story that comes across as quite homophobic. I assume this was done for laughs because of Faith dating/almost dating three gay men, and now she accidentally sets up her father with "a man." I'm not okay with that.

There really is such a cute story in The Best Man, including an awesome service dog (Faith has epilepsy), but it's buried under all kinds of nonsense. Maybe the author thought she was being inclusive by having gay and trans characters, but the language used and the way characters talk about them isn't right. It's not funny in any way. There's also a bunch of slut-shaming (leave that crap in high school, gosh!) and a couple of continuity errors.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.