10 days of wild, road-trip mishaps lead to true love in this slapstick romantic comedy
Jo Watters is a 46-year-old, attractive, British, IT specialist. She has a 17-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son from a 14-year marriage to her ex-husband, Ben, which ended five years ago when he cheated on her. In the years since, Jo has focused on her children and her career and avoided dating.
Adrián Rivera is a 42-year-old, Spanish, professional musician, who plays classical guitar. He has a 7-year-old son from a 10-year marriage to Monica, a flamingo dancer, whom he met when they were touring with the same company. Since the birth of his son, Adrián has concentrated on achieving a steady income via a job as a caregiver at a residential facility for old people and has rarely performed onstage. Their marriage ended in divorce two years ago, and Adrián has not been on a date since. He and Monica share joint custody. His son attends the same K-12 private school in London as Jo's two children. He and Jo met when both participated in the school's parent/teacher association several years ago. Jo thought Adrián had a lousy attitude during his one-year stint as a PTA volunteer and developed a resentful dislike of him.
The focus of this story is the wedding of their exes to each other. It is not clear how Ben and Monica first met, but Monica is currently planning an enormous wedding with the celebration stretching over seven days in Monica's hometown in Spain. Ben and Monica, naturally enough, want their children to attend all of the wedding events. The three children are already there with them in Spain, and Jo's daughter has been stuck with babysitting the 7-year-old, who is quite a handful. Ben and Monica have insisted that their exes, Jo and Adrián, attend the wedding festivities as well, and Monica's father has also insisted that Adrián play the guitar during the wedding. It has not occurred to either Jo or Adrián that they could refuse to attend this wedding extravaganza, especially since Jo's marriage to Ben and Adrián's marriage to Monica were simple, civil ceremonies at a registry office, and neither one of them has ever enjoyed attending an elaborate wedding, under any circumstances. Jo and Adrián encounter each other on the same plane flying from London to Spain and, when the plane is grounded in France because of bad weather, they are stranded in the middle of nowhere, with no public transportation and no rental cars, when the bus to go back to the plane the following morning leaves without them. This unlikely pair of opposites, grumpy, control-freak Jo and sunshiny, go-with-the-flow Adrián, endure unending, hellacious misadventures in order to make it on time to one of the initial and most important events of bridezilla Monica's huge wedding festival. Adrian refers to their adventures as, "two hospitals, a police station and a wedding."
This novel contains the following romance tropes:
Middle-aged lovers
Opposites attract
Enemies become lovers
Forced proximity
Only one bed
Road trip AKA two for the road
Wedding disasters
Comedy of errors
The plot of this novel is structured similar to wedding-disaster, romcom movies. It is not quite as extreme as the Jennifer Lopez movie, Shotgun Wedding, but very close, minus the gun-toting villains. Unfortunately, unlike a movie, which is wrapped up in under two hours, this book drags on, in audiobook format, for nine interminable hours, with one irritatingly redundant, slapstick crisis after another.
Having said all that, there are some positives in this story for me personally:
1. The story is told from the dual, third-person POV of the FMC and the MMC, like a traditional mainstream romance, which is not something that this author routinely does. The majority of her novels are chick-lit romance, with only the single, first-person POV of the FMC.
2. Adrián is an adorable Cinnamon Roll, who is the best part of the book.
3. Both Jo and Adrián have been celibate since their divorce. I really liked that Adrián is not a typical romance MMC who has been promiscuous after his divorce. And this setup also means there is no OW or OM drama.
4. This is a slowburn romance. There is onstage sex for the first time at 53%, but there is no physical description besides kissing and a mention of undressing. The scene focuses on tender emotions rather than lust.
5. Both Jo and Adrián really step up to the plate and take care of each other when their misadventures lead to actual physical injury.
6. There is a satisfying, well motivated HEA, including believable potential for a happy, blended family, because the three kids have a growth arc as well.
I received access to the audiobook version of this novel for free through Hoopla. The female narrator does a good job.
Balancing out the pluses and minuses of this story, I would rate it 2 stars for the slapstick but 4 stars for the romance, averaging out at 3 stars.