The Wedding Crasher by Mia Sosa

Welcome Back, Booklovers! So I read The Worst Best Man and Sun of Beach and I liked them so I decided to try The Wedding Crasher. Thank you Avon Books for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book opens with a wedding where Solange is helping her cousins who are the makeup artist and wedding planner. After witnessing the bride embracing another man, Solange can't keep quiet and stops the nuptials. Dean needs a pretend girlfriend as his works on an assignment that could lead to him becoming partner. 

There were so many times throughout this book that we got zany situations that felt so random as the author tried to make the book humorous. But they felt so unnatural and out of place. And they really served no purpose! It felt like she binged a bunch of movies and tv shows and then took pieces of them to insert in this story to fill pages. This book suffered from forced comedy and pop culture overload. Way too many tv show and movie mentions. No one talks like that in real life.

The Magic Mike obligatory karaoke to pony scene is so tired and overused now and it's been 10 years, let's find something new! It didn't even make sense here. It was just a randomly dropped in quick karaoke scene that had no build up and was more a quick play by play. And Dean did all that after 3 shots! Plus he's an attorney trying to look good so he can make partner. It didn't fit in with his very put together personality. 

I liked Solange but then her cousin's had the same exact personality too and I don't remember them all being so alike in the first book. Every woman in this book was cracking jokes and talking bluntly about sex. Which it's fine for people to have open discussions about sex. It's a whole other thing when your talking to your cousin and she randomly tells you about how she and her husband spice it up with butt plugs. 

I'm not liking the trend of the 400 page romance and I wish it would end soon. The books are feeling like they should end by the 80% mark so by the time you get to the end you just wish it was over. Why did publishing decide romance needed to drag for 100s of extra pages? I can't even say it fully had a third act breakup because they weren't actually a couple they just had a friends with benefits situation going on, then a fight that ended the sex part but they were still in each other's orbit chillin the entire time.

When they were bonding over their family situations and career goals and dreams is when this couple felt the most natural and worked for me. I liked Solange's mother and tias. The family was very close knit and supportive of each other. It was a nice contrast to Dean's family which was just him and his mother and they weren't even close. I loved all the mentions of Brazilian food. Once you get past the heavy abundance of tropes and forced comedic situations you get a story about two people who are longing for stability and fulfillment.