Review: The Wedding Pact

The Wedding Pact by Isla Gordon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

August Anderson is a young actress who have just moved back to Bath from London. Ever since she was a child she has been obsessed by a four-storey Georgian townhouse in Elizabeth Street, often sitting outside staring at the house as a way of relaxing. When she finds out that a flat in the house is available to rent she is ecstatic and asks her boyfriend James to move in with her to share the rent. Unfortunately James doesn't feel the same way - cue the end of that relationship!

Flynn Miyoshi has travelled from Japan to Bath to take up a new job in a law firm, he's got a flat share lined up but it falls through when the couple he was going to rent from split up and need the spare room. After a long-haul flight, delays, a coach journey from London and a night in a noisy hotel things are looking bad, then a cute girl in a coffee shop bumps into him and spills coffee all over his one remaining clean shirt.

Flynn and August get to talking and visit the open day at Elizabeth Street together, but their hopes of sharing the flat are dashed when August overhears the flat's elderly owner tell her son that she would only let the flat to a married couple. So August concocts a ludicrous plan, pretend to be married to each other to secure the flat. Of course things aren't that easy, the townhouse isn't that big, their landlady lives in one of the flats, and they are being caught out by friends, colleagues, and housemates in small lies and the minutiae of married life.

All of this was good fun and enjoyable. But about midway through this book felt like it got flabby and lost its way. Flynn starts dating a girl he meets in a bar, August starts to have feelings for their landlady's son Abe and things got a bit confused. I feel that Isla Gordon was trying to make all the characters too likable and as a reader I was confused as to which suitor I was supposed to be rooting for. Also, by making both Abe and Flynn so likable it made August's flip-flopping between the two of them feel wrong and I didn't really 'see' that August truly loved the man she chose in the end.

In the end I felt that Isla Gordon tried so hard to make everyone a good guy, tie up all the loose ends, and give everyone a happy ending that the plot drifted away. I liked it and it was easy reading but in the end I wasn't invested in the characters enough.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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