RITA Reader Challenge Review

Always a Bridesmaid by Lizzie Shane

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2017 review was written by Jillian Boyd. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Long Contemporary category.

The summary:

She’s all heart. He’s all business.

Parvati Jai knows better than to pin any romantic hopes on Max Dewitt. She may have had a crush on her best friend’s older brother since she figured out what boys were good for, but she’s looking for Mister Forever – not a workaholic entrepreneur with a romantic attention span that tops out at two weeks. Yet with her business failing, her newly-engaged best friend vanishing into a love bubble, and even her teenage niece announcing she’s getting married, Max becomes the one person she can rely on – and the idea of a little fling with him becomes even more tempting.

Max knows his little sister’s best friend is off-limits…until Parvati confesses she once had a crush on him and he can’t help seeing her in a new – and very intriguing – light. He’s never been good at letting people past his charming facade, but something about Parvati makes him want to let down his defenses.

But even if he lets himself fall for her, how can he convince a woman who knows all about his love-’em-and-leave-’em ways that he finally wants forever?

Here is Jillian Boyd's review:

Even though Always a Bridesmaid is a spin-off from Lizzie Shane’s Reality Romance series, this one works perfectly fine if you haven’t read that series. This book gives you just the right amount of context. Our heroine, Parvati Jai – lifelong besties with Sidney Dewitt, the protagonist from Planning on Prince Charming – is the owner of a little indie coffee house in Eden, California. She’s single, which makes her the odd one out among her sisters and cause for a lot of gentle familial concern.

But the being single thing is the least of Parv’s worries – her business is failing, and fast, and she’s run out of ideas to keep the coffee house going. In addition to that, her 18-year-old niece announces her engagement at Parv’s parents’ wedding anniversary party, and her bff Sidney is caught up in her own wedding planning business (not to mention the reality show she hosts, where she’s responsible for planning fairytale weddings for deserving brides). For Parv, the feeling of loneliness is an ever-creeping menace.

There’s one bright spot in her life though – Sidney’s brother, Max. Loyal customer at her coffee shop, in her life since she was six years old, the object of a very long-standing crush.

Max Dewitt was tall and muscular enough that he should have looked like a wrestler in a monkey suit, but instead he looked like James Bond – a sexy, super ripped James Bond with perfectly styled dark brown hair and steely grey eyes that somehow managed to be warm when he smiled at her. Which he did now, revealing perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. And the dimple… really, the dimple was just unfair. Sex appeal overkill.

It’s… not hard to see why, is it?

A big theme in the book, apart from friends-to-lovers (and if this is your catnip, delve right in) is the expectations familial legacies bring with them. Parvati’s folks have been together since they were both nineteen. Her father is a retired and highly respected pharmaceutical researcher – who used to work for Max and Sidney’s mother. Her mother was a developmental psychologist and educational adviser to the governor of California, and has a best-selling book and a career as a motivational speaker.

Add to that four fiercely intelligent career women as older sisters, all of them married and with kids, all of them with CV’s which are… well, impressive does not begin to cover it. Max and Sidney, meanwhile, are the children of two steely-eyed career people. As mentioned earlier, their mother owned a pharmaceutical company, and their father is a powerful business mogul who has based himself mostly in Switzerland. There are some pretty messed-up dynamics between the Dewitts and their kids, who both own their own businesses but continue to operate under the shadow of their own upbringing.

It’s a lot to live up to, and Parv spends a lot of the book feeling like she’s failed at life because she isn’t more like her sisters and parents. Which, at points, does make you feel like you want to take her aside and tell her everything will be fine, love, you walk your own path and other stuff to that tune. But Parv feels so relatable – whether you’re at a cross-roads with your working life, or you’re a bit deflated because everyone around you seems to be settling down. Sure, everything’s drawn in broad strokes, but there will be moments where you go… “ah, yes, it me, just a little bit.”

“And I never once felt like I could relax. Five years of stress, Max. The only place I felt like myself was in my stainless steel palace of a kitchen. Which was too big, really, for a coffee house, but I indulged because it was the only place I could breathe.”

Max – the owner of a security agency – can get annoyingly protective. There’s a lot of mention of Parv being “off limits,” to the point where it’ll make you roll your eyes. There are a few bits of plot that get brushed over and not given a satisfying ending. And the tension between Parvati and Sidney goes on for far too long. But this is, by and large, a good book which reads at a zippy pace. It made me want to delve into the series it’s been spun off from – which revolves around a The Bachelor-style reality show called Marrying Mr. Perfect – and makes me want to read the books in this new series as well. Especially the next book, tackling the relationship between Max’s tech guru Candy and bodyguard Pretty Boy (oh my Christ, Candy is proper heart-eyes material).

If you’ve been feeling a bit low, Always a Bridesmaid does the business as a pick-me-up read and does it very well. Fair warning though – it will make you want cake. Like, a lot.


Always a Bridesmaid by Lizzie Shane received a B- in a previous RITA Reader Challenge Review.

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Always a Bridesmaid by Lizzie Shane

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  1. Lora says:

    Wait, what? THere’s a series of books set around a bachelor style series and I don’t have them? MUST ONE CLICK

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