THE WEDDING DATE DISASTER is the fourth book in Avery Flynn’s “Harbor City” series but works as a standalone novel as well. This is a perfect book for readers who enjoy the enemies-to-lovers romance trope. I’m not usually one of them, but I did enjoy this book. Web Holt is Hadley’s guy BFF. Will Holt is the bane of Hadley’s existence. Web contrives to get his bro and his BFF together with mixed results. Snark and sexy times ensue.

Nothing seems to be going right for Hadley when she and Will are caught in a somewhat compromising position that gets her fired. She wasn’t flush with cash to begin with, but this really doesn’t help. The cherry on the cake is having to go back to her hometown and the loving, if a tad constricting, arms of her family for her little sister’s wedding. It’s not that Hadley and her family are on bad terms, but she is not in any mood for probing questions about her career or her nonexistent love life. Web initially agrees to join her to the family compound as her fake romantic “plus-one”. Disaster strikes and Will winds up as her wingman instead. Yikes! It’s helpful that this story is told from alternating perspectives, since the two main characters really know so little about each other and what drives them. Will alternately flirts with Hadley – partly to drive her crazy and partly because she drives him crazy – and low-level snipes at her. It’s not that Will is a total jerk, but he carries a lot of baggage from his childhood and his last relationship. The grandmother who raised him was a cold woman who values money above everything else, and his ex Mia tried to play him to get wealth and status. Since then, Will has a chip on his shoulder and worries Hadley is out to fleece his brother. Far from being the femme fatale Will imagines her to be, Hadley is just trying to keep her head above water and values the few true friends she’s lucky to have. As I said, I usually prefer friends-to-lovers rather than enemies to lovers, but this story intrigued me, and the dialogue is engaging.

THE WEDDING DATE DISASTER is like the classic “buddy movie” but with more kissing and less car chases and things exploding. Hadley’s family is quirky rather than obnoxiously zany. I wouldn’t mind reading about Will’s brother in a future story. This is the first book I’ve read by Avery Flynn, but I’d be up for trying more by her in the future.

Book Summary