Yeah ...no. This didn't work for me, but I rounded up to 2 stars because the banter is good and it tries to tackle some complicated family and relationship things.

This a contemporary second chance romance with a forced proximity / wedding party trope, an author for a main character with snippets of her historical romance work-in-progress running throughout, a slightly overweight and badly behaved rescue bulldog, and lots of beautiful, white, upper-middle-class people enjoying wedding festivities in NYC. There were plenty of red flags in the first few chapters to let me know this wasn't going to be for me, but I ignored them because the witty, bantering dialogue between the friends and the main characters was funny. Like good, fast-talking-sitcom funny.

Our main characters were pretty awful to each other at the onset, but I hoped to discover that they had just been idiot kids who managed to hurt each other once in unfortunate but reconcilable ways after they had each grown. Typical second chance romance stuff. And that could've been true. Except they went on, no longer kids, to continue using and hurting each other and others. Add in a toxic parent, unresolved father issues, boundary-ignoring friends, actual cheating rearing its ugly head, and a plot that turns this second chance romance into a third, no, fourth chance romance and ... No thanks. No amount of witty banter and last act resolutions and growth were going to make up for all of that.

As for the writing, there were some odd pacing choices, and I'm a big fan of dialogue, but this was ... a lot. It made the whole thing feel amateurish — both overindulgent and underdeveloped — or as if it was a converted script and most of the narration was just there to move the characters from one conversation setting to the next. Distinctive voices were unevenly maintained. My digital ARC wasn't formatted particularly well, and I lost the thread of who was talking more often than I should've. I didn't mind the historical romance snippets throughout, although I had issues with how those characters treated each other, too. The discussions about romance as a genre were okay, and I thought they might be a redeeming aspect of the book, but then we see in the epilogue that the dude is still teasing the author about her inappropriate reading materials. (If you like the romance book interstitials, I recommend trying the Bromance Book Club series for a refreshing approach to that technique. And Beach Read handles the romance genre discussions much better — managing it without the tired, belittling snideness.)

So... this one wasn't for me, but plenty of others have enjoyed it, so your mileage may vary. Unless cheating is a deal breaker — then your mileage will be remarkably similar or worse than mine.

Tropes: second chance romance, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, grand gesture, writing life
Content notes: body negativity/fatphobia, car accident, death of a parent, divorce, drinking in excess, grief, emotional manipulation, boundary issues, cheating...