Review: Here Comes The Groom

Here Comes The Groom by Karina Bliss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As you can see from the cover of the kindle edition this is a re-release of an old M&B novel. I thought it weathered quite well, but then I'm on holiday and everything reads better on the beach, right?

So Jocelyn (Jo) Swann is getting drunk in a hotel, trying to get laid, when her best friend Dan Jansen v-blocks her. Little does he know that she is trying to have one last fling before surgery the next morning. She even tries it on with Dan, only to be thoroughly rejected.

12 months later and Dan is a broken man. His NZ-SAS team were ambushed and two of his best friends died whilst he was off the mission due to toothache! He can't stop blaming himself for his friends' deaths and can barely talk to his friend Lee's widow Claire and her son. He and Jo made a pact, signed on a beer mat, that if they were still single at 33 they would get married, in an attempt to live life big Dan is determined to do just that, even if Jo doesn't want to.

The past 12 months have been hard for Jo, coping after her surgery, running a failing local newspaper AND trying to look after her grandmother who has dementia. The last thing she needs is her best friend playing a practical joke on the town and sending everyone wedding invitations!

This was funny, Dan is planning the whole wedding despite all of Jo's best efforts to thwart him yet underlying his actions is a desperation. At the same time his own parents are having a marital crisis and his father has moved into Dan's house.

I actually read this after I read the first book and I think I bought both thinking of the author Karina Halle, maybe having read the second book I was more inclined to like this as I saw Merry and Ross and heard of Viv and Charlie?

Anyway, it made a nice change of pace for the man to be forcing the woman up the aisle, even if when it was first published it might have seemed a real gender-bender, now it was just a fun romance.



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