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The Back-Up Planner
She’s a Type-A Wedding Planner Without a Plan...He’s Her Laid-Back Ex-Best-Friend Who Broke Her Heart
Lacy has always had a plan—her life meticulously laid out beside neatly organized checkboxes. Up until now, her Master List was going
Get out of Cape Shore, her small sleepy hometown--check
Go to NYU for Event Planning --check
Become an amazing wedding planner and spend the rest of her life making perfect plans for everyone else--check
Meet a handsome and wealthy man who perfectly matches her vision--check…mostly…
Her life is perfect. Any *little* hiccups can easily be chalked up to normal growing pains, right?
When a childhood friend calls, begging her to take over the last-minute planning for the biggest wedding event in Cape Shore history, she has to drop everything and go back home. Running into the ex-best friend who happened to break her heart years ago definitely wasn’t on her to-do list. Neither was the life-altering upheaval that it brought.
Now she is left questioning herself and all her carefully laid plans.
This second chance romance delivers the 2000s romcom feels with spicy forced proximity, hilarious hijinks, small-town romance and a life plan turned upside down set to a beach read backdrop.
Back-Up Planner is an interconnected stand alone in the Cape Shore Romance Series.
Lacy has always had a plan—her life meticulously laid out beside neatly organized checkboxes. Up until now, her Master List was going
Get out of Cape Shore, her small sleepy hometown--check
Go to NYU for Event Planning --check
Become an amazing wedding planner and spend the rest of her life making perfect plans for everyone else--check
Meet a handsome and wealthy man who perfectly matches her vision--check…mostly…
Her life is perfect. Any *little* hiccups can easily be chalked up to normal growing pains, right?
When a childhood friend calls, begging her to take over the last-minute planning for the biggest wedding event in Cape Shore history, she has to drop everything and go back home. Running into the ex-best friend who happened to break her heart years ago definitely wasn’t on her to-do list. Neither was the life-altering upheaval that it brought.
Now she is left questioning herself and all her carefully laid plans.
This second chance romance delivers the 2000s romcom feels with spicy forced proximity, hilarious hijinks, small-town romance and a life plan turned upside down set to a beach read backdrop.
Back-Up Planner is an interconnected stand alone in the Cape Shore Romance Series.
332 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 18, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 11, 2025
I wanted to like this more than I did. It definitely had its cute moments, and I liked Lacey’s friends enough to try reading the books about them, but this one left me wanting.
Eddie was the absolute worst, and was undoubtedly cheating on Lacey throughout their awful relationship. Gabe sleeping with Lacey while thinking she was still with her fiancé?! Yuck, made me lose all respect for the man. Lacey’s inner monologue just made me frustrated and screaming at her to see a therapist. And the ending? “Surprise here’s a wedding for you, the ultimate planner who always has a list and opinions, that you had no say in!” It made me so freaking mad hahaha just ruined any hope the book had for me.
Eddie was the absolute worst, and was undoubtedly cheating on Lacey throughout their awful relationship. Gabe sleeping with Lacey while thinking she was still with her fiancé?! Yuck, made me lose all respect for the man. Lacey’s inner monologue just made me frustrated and screaming at her to see a therapist. And the ending? “Surprise here’s a wedding for you, the ultimate planner who always has a list and opinions, that you had no say in!” It made me so freaking mad hahaha just ruined any hope the book had for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 5, 2025
Uhhhh…. So, I needed a palette cleanser between like a mass of reading five romantasy books in the course of 10 days. This showed up in my feed and I thought, why not?
I skimmed quite a bit of this book, yet it was so short. I struggled to see the connection and it was cookie cutter to so many second chance romances out there.
I haven’t read other books in the series but I’m guessing the two engaged couples in this book where from earlier books in the series and they took up a lot of this book to be honest, considering it was about one of their weddings.
Some spoiler-ish info:
Listen, if you think a woman is engaged to another man and you decide to fuck her, there should be a clear conversation about protection. I don’t care if it’s a fiction book. It was all I could think about it. Pretty fucked up. So, Gabe not only took advantage of her in emotional turmoil, he didn’t protect either of them. He also knew what her feelings had been and took advantage of her not being in a position to have any leverage. THEN, instead of talking right then, he let it get weird. Don’t get me wrong she deserves some backlash too, okay. These two were just stupid, sorry, I said it. Don’t get me wrong, obviously the fiancé was made to look bad and I’m sure he sucks as a person and all but she was emotionally cheating from the second she saw Gabe.
And Gabe acted like a jealous ex, doing the macho “look how much I know her better than you” act it was just off putting. His whole “all this was for you” bs.
Just didn’t care 🤷🏼♀️
Oh, and the weird sex description of a particular area seemed… off?
End of kinda spoiler-y info
Overall: 2.5… why did I round up? I don’t know.
FMC: 3 I mean she wasn’t the worst?
MMC: 2 nope on so many levels
Spice: if they had been clear on relationship status and had a talk about protections 1.5 even though the writing made me question what the author knows about positions and descriptions and locations of specific areas of the body, since they didn’t and that ruined it for me? 0
I skimmed quite a bit of this book, yet it was so short. I struggled to see the connection and it was cookie cutter to so many second chance romances out there.
I haven’t read other books in the series but I’m guessing the two engaged couples in this book where from earlier books in the series and they took up a lot of this book to be honest, considering it was about one of their weddings.
Some spoiler-ish info:
Listen, if you think a woman is engaged to another man and you decide to fuck her, there should be a clear conversation about protection. I don’t care if it’s a fiction book. It was all I could think about it. Pretty fucked up. So, Gabe not only took advantage of her in emotional turmoil, he didn’t protect either of them. He also knew what her feelings had been and took advantage of her not being in a position to have any leverage. THEN, instead of talking right then, he let it get weird. Don’t get me wrong she deserves some backlash too, okay. These two were just stupid, sorry, I said it. Don’t get me wrong, obviously the fiancé was made to look bad and I’m sure he sucks as a person and all but she was emotionally cheating from the second she saw Gabe.
And Gabe acted like a jealous ex, doing the macho “look how much I know her better than you” act it was just off putting. His whole “all this was for you” bs.
Just didn’t care 🤷🏼♀️
Oh, and the weird sex description of a particular area seemed… off?
End of kinda spoiler-y info
Overall: 2.5… why did I round up? I don’t know.
FMC: 3 I mean she wasn’t the worst?
MMC: 2 nope on so many levels
Spice: if they had been clear on relationship status and had a talk about protections 1.5 even though the writing made me question what the author knows about positions and descriptions and locations of specific areas of the body, since they didn’t and that ruined it for me? 0
September 3, 2026
This is hard cause the book itself I liked but gave and Lacey? They weren’t believable to me at all. They barely had development they were pretty much thrown together for the sake of the friends to lovers trope! Not once reading this book was a getting “it’s always been you” not once was I getting “I secretly loved you back but didn’t wanna hold you back” I wasn’t even getting Any pining or longing from Gabe not even when he meets her fiance, there were no moments where you could tell he liked her they were literally giving JUST FRIENDS this whole book. If I didn’t know going in that the love story was Gabe and Lacey I would’ve been expecting a “saw you swear” type book where Lacey eventually moves on from Gabe and finds her own Noah Riley, that’s how little development there was. They were literally just friends for like 90% before randomly getting together.
Also Lacey was honestly really annoying with how’d she react to certain things. Like getting mad about certain things with her fiance but then proving him right like you were in fact thirsting over you best friend and your gonna get mad at him for insinuating that? Girl you slept with Gabe what? 2 maybe 3 hours after ending your engagement…yea I think it’s safe to say you proved him right, then she’d get mad he wouldn’t want to talk about their fights but then when he’d bring something up that doesn’t make her look good she’d get mad like the double standards were crazy!!!! Idk book just wasn’t for me and that’s mainly cause of the unbelievable love story. I don’t even wanna talk about the fact Gabe willingly hooked up with Lacey TWICE thinking she was still engaged like bro really?!?!?!!!
Also Lacey was honestly really annoying with how’d she react to certain things. Like getting mad about certain things with her fiance but then proving him right like you were in fact thirsting over you best friend and your gonna get mad at him for insinuating that? Girl you slept with Gabe what? 2 maybe 3 hours after ending your engagement…yea I think it’s safe to say you proved him right, then she’d get mad he wouldn’t want to talk about their fights but then when he’d bring something up that doesn’t make her look good she’d get mad like the double standards were crazy!!!! Idk book just wasn’t for me and that’s mainly cause of the unbelievable love story. I don’t even wanna talk about the fact Gabe willingly hooked up with Lacey TWICE thinking she was still engaged like bro really?!?!?!!!
September 2, 2025
I wanted to like this more, but it was just not good. The characters sucked, the FMC was clearly mentally abused her whole life and was following the script of her bitter mom, her supposed "best friend" (MMC) literally ditched her because he was insecure. She ends up with a miserable life with a shitty fiance and then gets called to come save the wedding day with two weeks notice for her other "best friend" who is shallow and knows nothing about her life because FMC doesnt trust her??? best friend where?
FMC also officially breaks up with her fiance and IMMEDIATELY, within like 10 minutes it seems sees him with another women, (its implied he was probably out cheating when he was "with clients" but is never said if thats true.) She then sleeps with the MMC who afterwards turns her down again. Good lord these two suck.
And way to give the absolute ick that the MMC slept with her thinking she was still engaged and was like "Oh yeah, I saw so little of you that I figured you for a cheater" like damn. She was a shell of a person settling for bottom barrel men because of childhood trauma so she let that slide without even a comment.
The end had me enraged HE'S LIKE SURPRISE, I planned everything without you and took all those shared moments away!
ICK, ICK, ICK
FMC also officially breaks up with her fiance and IMMEDIATELY, within like 10 minutes it seems sees him with another women, (its implied he was probably out cheating when he was "with clients" but is never said if thats true.) She then sleeps with the MMC who afterwards turns her down again. Good lord these two suck.
And way to give the absolute ick that the MMC slept with her thinking she was still engaged and was like "Oh yeah, I saw so little of you that I figured you for a cheater" like damn. She was a shell of a person settling for bottom barrel men because of childhood trauma so she let that slide without even a comment.
The end had me enraged HE'S LIKE SURPRISE, I planned everything without you and took all those shared moments away!
ICK, ICK, ICK
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 23, 2025
It was sweet…
This story was sweet but a little frustrating at times. The FMC was very wishy-washy which led to chapters of her lamenting her choices over and over again. She did have some character development, which I loved for her. I couldn’t say the same for the MMC and side characters. I wasn’t able to connect with them, but the entire story was told from her point of view only.
***One last thing: I think there are parts of the spice scenes that need to be rewritten. The…ahem…”little man in the boat” is on the outside, not the inside.***
This story was sweet but a little frustrating at times. The FMC was very wishy-washy which led to chapters of her lamenting her choices over and over again. She did have some character development, which I loved for her. I couldn’t say the same for the MMC and side characters. I wasn’t able to connect with them, but the entire story was told from her point of view only.
***One last thing: I think there are parts of the spice scenes that need to be rewritten. The…ahem…”little man in the boat” is on the outside, not the inside.***
July 24, 2025
This was actually really good! At first Gabe was making me mad, but it ended so beautifully.🥹
August 11, 2025
really good
Loved the storyline and the characters. Just the right length. Great spelling (believe me it’s a thing). Hope to read more from her.
Loved the storyline and the characters. Just the right length. Great spelling (believe me it’s a thing). Hope to read more from her.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews