The Wedding Date
Like many books I’ve been reading lately, especially the romances, I’m pretty sure this came across my radar because of other Cannonballers. It’s the story of Alexa and Drew, who meet in an elevator and have some time to get to know each other when the elevator gets stuck. Drew is in town for his ex’s wedding and doesn’t have a date, and he impulsively asks Alexa to be his date. She agrees.
Drew isn’t interested in having a girlfriend, and he is up front with Alexa about this, but he develops a personal and physical attraction to her quickly enough that he postpones his flight home (to the opposite end of California) and then invites her to visit the following weekend. Alexa also develops feelings for Drew, and they start regularly visiting each other, while knowing that at some point there will be an expiration date on their relationship.
I liked the book, it was a pleasant read, but I don’t know that I would call it anything other than just fine. I’m not sure why the characters or story didn’t really grab me, although I will say that Alexa felt more fleshed out than Drew, and we never get a reason for his antipathy towards long-term relationships and need to end things before they get too serious. Given how strongly he feels about them, I thought for sure that at some point we’d find out he’d been terribly heartbroken in the past, but nope, he’s just commitment phobic. I also thought the beginning of the novel felt a little too forced. I get that it’s supposed to be kind of a meet-cute, but somehow it didn’t feel as effortless as in other novels. I’m still happy I read it, though.
All the Feels
I think I might have enjoyed this follow up to Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade even more than the first book, although with that said, I do wish there had been more appearances by Marcus and April in this one (we do get several appearances from Marcus alone). The first half of the book follows the timeline of the events of Spoiler Alert, so we know why Alex has been given a “minder” by the name of Lauren Clegg, and we know that eventually he’s going to seemingly implode his career at a fan convention.
This isn’t really a conventional romance because it’s slow burn. Alex and Lauren are getting to know each other and becoming friends for the first half of the book, and while they start to develop some physical attraction toward each other, this isn’t expressed until they go on a road trip to a wedding in the second half of the book.
Spoiler Alert had interstitial sections between the chapters that were pieces of fanfiction or scripts from some of Marcus’s previous films. All the Feels provides a variation on that trend. Some fanfiction is still included, but a lot of the other interludes are text exchanges. However, my favorite one was from a script of a terrible movie that Alex was in, in which he dates a mime, and reading it made me laugh out loud. I won’t quote it here, but it’s almost worth it to read the book just for that.
I wish Marcus and April had made more of an appearance in this one because it’s always nice to see how couples from previous novels are doing, but I didn’t miss them too much. Alex is a “delightful asshole,” and Lauren is an intriguing character. It was a solid follow-up to Spoiler Alert.
