It had to be you

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Romance / General / Clark, Georgia	4-week checkout	Due 05-08-2024

When her late husband leaves his half of their wedding planning business to his girlfriend, Liv Goldenhorn, who never saw this coming, finds herself shackled to her polar opposite in every way, whose inexperience may be just what the company needs.

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Not great submitted by russelan on June 13, 2022, 7:03pm I didn't love the premise of this - husband dies and leaves his half of his wedding business to his mistress - but thought I'd try it out anyway. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me.

This book ended up following many different relationships with some sometimes loose connections with the other characters, like Love Actually. I never felt like I got to know any of the characters well.

Many Moving Parts submitted by Meginator on June 17, 2023, 11:43pm This romance novel features several loosely interconnecting plots that incorporate some of the genre’s most common tropes, although it suffers from a common problem inherent in this type of book: namely, none of its individual storylines and characters receive the full attention and depth they deserve, and the love stories can feel abbreviated and/or rushed as a result. The main setup, in which a man’s recently widowed wife and bereaved mistress share a wedding planning business, is too forced to be truly believable despite (and often because of) the author’s attempts to dive into the psychology of their unlikely union, although the business itself does offer a credible means to connect the book’s diverse cast of characters.

The stories themselves generally proceed along expected trajectories, with the two surprises coming from an older established couple and a young woman who ends up questioning her (heretofore straight) sexuality. Aside from a few head-smackingly blunt lines (“she just hadn’t met [love interest] yet”), the book reads easily and quickly, and the storylines have just enough originality to them to remain interesting even though they use familiar plot progressions. The emotional balance sits nicely between feeling good (it is, after all, a romantic comedy) and offering some moments of concern and tension, and it is a testament to the author’s interest in all of the distinct storylines that they each retain some unique appeal, although readers may naturally want to spend more time with certain characters than the book’s format allows. Altogether, this is a pleasant read that knits together some common types of love stories with surprising, yet still sometimes unfulfilling, depth.