![](https://i0.wp.com/smexybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/IMG_4918.jpg?resize=665%2C1024&ssl=1)
Wedding Dashers by Heather McBreen
Contemporary Romance
January 28, 2025, by Berkley
Review by Melanie
There’s an ongoing conversation happening in Romancelandia these days about tropes and the over usage of them to write and sell a book. In reality, tropes can be quite gimmicky and an easy way to market a book. Put up a cute little Instagram ready graphic, surround it with a half dozen tropes contained within the book and there you have it, easy-peasy lemon squeezy! It’s quick and fun and eye-popping if done correctly and it probably helps sell a lot of books that way.
The problem, however, lies in the actual writing of the book. A book needs a plot. It needs character development, it needs multifaceted characters who evolve and progress and grow through the book. If an author overrelies on tropes, then the book feels hollow, lacking in substance and depth.
I’m not going to say Wedding Dashers, by Heather McBreen, was bad. It truly wasn’t and in fact, I think a lot of people will actually probably really enjoy this book. However, there are a couple of big problems for me with this book and I just want to address them in this review.
First of all, let’s address the issue of tropes. This book has a fair amount. Our two MCs, Ada and Jack, meet while enroute to the same destination wedding at a castle in Ireland. She’s the bride to be’s older sister and maid of honor, he’s the groom’s best friend and best man. Flight cancellations and hotel reservation mishaps plus a luggage mixup all combine to put these two in the same location, miles and hours from their final destination just days before the wedding is to take place.
Ada, broke and without many other options, takes Jack’s offer to travel together and also his offer of sharing a hotel room the very first night they meet. If by now you’ve guessed that the first trope to pop up in this book is only one bed, then I’ll have some lovely parting gifts for you at the end of this review. (I’m kidding, there are no gifts, just the satisfaction of knowing that you were right). Ada, aside from being broke, is also brokenhearted. She is, to quote Ross Gellar from Friends, on a break from her boyfriend of 8 years (not her idea), just recently had to close down her tattoo parlor business, and hasn’t spoken to her sister in quite a while as she was less than enthused to learn Allison was marrying some guy she just met. She grew up with a single mom and since her mom worked long hours to support them, Ada became the de facto mom to her sister, and as such, is overly involved and always trying to fix everything for Allison, which includes a series of toxic relationships with problematic men. Given that Ada barely knows the fiance (a plastic surgeon named Collin who happens to be close to a decade older than his would be bride), it stands to reason that she’s not sold on this relationship or the upcoming wedding. The interesting thing about Ada is that she holds nothing back, she is a complete open book and not shy about stating what she wants.
Jack, on the other hand, is a closed book. He is not giving anything away although it’s pretty obvious from the get go that he’s definitely hiding something big, a revelation that comes around the 60% mark of the book and while it’s not all that shocking, I will refrain from spoiling the big secret. If Ada is all hearts and emotions and desperate to get back together with her ex, then Jack is the complete antithesis, not sold on relationships and love and monogamy and perhaps human emotions in general. The problem is that he feels more like a caricature than a real character, and while there is obviously a change in how he feels towards the beginning of the book to how he feels at the end of the book, the journey to how he gets from point A to point B seems to be lacking a bit.
The two embark on a journey that becomes increasingly absurd, with repeated shared hotel rooms including one that forces them to pretend to be a married couple (fake relationship trope, check!) and involves a bus ride, a train ride, a borrowed car that inevitably breaks down midjourney, a ferry ride, and an unfortrunate night out at a pub that ends with Ada vomiting on Jack and him taking care of her. While their journey starts with them at odds with each other, by the time they make it to the wedding venue, the antagonism has turned to lust and they eventually act on their attraction and sleep together the night before the wedding, around three quarters of the way through the book.
This brings me to my second problem, the pacing of this book. From the time they meet to the actual wedding is maybe just a few days, not even a whole week. Once the wedding occurs, they have their third act breakup and then, in the course of two chapters, a whole year has passed before the big finale and HEA. I wish that the author had dedicated a little more space to those 52 weeks because it really does make the end of the book feel rushed and the HEA feels a little less earned that way. I’m not saying I don’t buy that these two have big feelings for each other but the way it jumps from them separating at the end of the wedding to their reunion a year later feels really random, especially in light of the fact that it’s pretty clearly mentioned that in that one year, there was zero contact or communication between them.
In writing this review, I’ve realized that this book would have made a very cute rom com movie (and still could! I’d definitely watch it!). However, what makes a rom com movie work doesn’t necessarily translate the same way to a book. Pacing and character development issues aside, I think there’s still an audience for this book. But for me, this book lands in that unfortunate category of fine but forgettable.
Grade: C+
Content Notes: past recollection of parental abandonment and parental death;
Leave a Reply