Review: The Best Man's Bride

The Best Man's Bride by Jamie Dallas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Two and a half stars.

Hailey runs out on her own wedding when she catches her fiancé Evan and her wedding planner in a passionate clinch on the morning of their wedding. Running away from the humiliation, she runs smack into Evan's business partner Jace. Although Hailey and Jace have never really hit it off, he offers to get her out of the pouring rain and take her to his nearby apartment as she is pretty conspicuous running around in a wedding dress.

Somehow (can you feel my eyes roll), Evan has persuaded Hailey not to take on any other clients in the run up to their wedding so Hailey's only client is Jace and Evan's company Sun Tech. She's also given up her apartment in San Francisco to be with Evan in Houston, and agreed to put all the wedding expenses on her credit card until after the wedding when Evan will kindly reimburse her. So now Hailey is homeless, jobless, and massively in debt. Then Jace offers her double her fee if she will complete the work she as doing for Sun Tech to launch their Houston business (I have no idea what it was, something to do with property and technology? Not sure it was ever truly explained). Hailey counteroffers, she will complete the assignment, despite having a clause allowing her to cancel the contract, if Jace allows her to stay in his guest room for the duration.

Jace is an ice-man and his apartment is cold and sterile. Hailey is a vivacious redhead with a love of colour and texture. Soon she is turning his cold empty soulless apartment into a home. But Jace can never allow himself to get close to anyone, because childhood stuff, so he pushes Hailey away just as much as he craves her warmth. Can he allow her to stay in his home without compromising his principals?

For a brand new book this certainly has a dated feel. I thought we'd got past the mounds of creamy flesh and billionaires in their beautiful but sterile homes and childhood traumas after FSoG but clearly not (and that is the second time I have made that analogy today).

In their own ways Jace and Evan are broken because of 'stuff in their childhoods' which seems to give them carte blanche to push Hailey around and behave like jackasses.

Overall, dated feel and a tropey-plot that didn't bring anything new to the table.

I was given a free copy f this book by the publisher Tule in return for an honest review.

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