The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory

A groomsman and his last-minute guest are about to discover if a fake date can go the distance in a fun and flirty debut novel.

Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's too hard to resist.

On the eve of his ex's wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend...

After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she's the mayor's chief of staff. Too bad they can't stop thinking about the other... 

They're just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century--or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want...

Source: advance e-galley provided in exchange for an honest review


Sometimes the universe conspires to throw two people together into a situation so they can meet and beautiful things can happen. In The Wedding Date, the two people would be Alexa and Drew, and the situation a stalled elevator. They chit chat, joke around and share cheese and crackers during the brief period they're stuck in there. Alexa's visiting her sister who's in town and Drew is there for his best friend's wedding though he's not looking forward to being in it. Since they got along so well in the few moments they were in a confined space, he's struck with the idea to invite Alexa to the wedding as his date. It's an unusual offer from a stranger but she accepts and ... voila! The last-minute wedding date turns into a few more weekend hook ups.

Alexa and Drew are both happily single and successful in their respective careers - she's the mayor's chief of staff and he's a pediatric doctor. The slight snag comes with distance - she lives in San Francisco and he's in LA. But since they hit it off so well that first weekend, they figure they could do the long distance thing and just see where it goes. No expectations, no pressure. At some point though it gets complicated. Even though they agreed to just have fun, the impulse to put a label to what they have going on and define who they are to each other is there. It's  interesting how it's been sex-based this whole time and then all the awkwardness kicks in when they try to be serious about it. Funnier still how they can be physically intimate yet hesitant to initiate a conversation about where the relationship is headed. It just goes to show that even adults can't get it together sometimes. 

I noticed some buzz in the last week about the fact that this is an interracial couple featuring a female POC. Personally, I'm glad for it because as one myself, it's nice to see something similar to my situation reflected in a story. Guillory joins the ranks of many of her fellow authors in giving POC a voice and showing them facing many of the same ups and downs that any couple faces. The Wedding Date doesn't make their racial backgrounds the main focus but rather how two individuals will navigate their relationship around their careers and any lingering fears of commitment. So what I'm getting at is that it's nice to see representation but for me, it's important that there's an experience within the story that anyone can appreciate.

The Wedding Date is an adorable story about two adults simply figuring things out and having fun along the way. It's one of those "good feels" books which I had a wonderful time reading. I cannot recommend it enough.

~ Bel

Excerpt

Alexa danced with Lauren, letting the movement and the laughter shake away her annoying thoughts. When she felt a hand on her waist, she turned to see Drew behind her and laughed again, at how ridiculous the evening had been and how much fun she was suddenly having. He took ahold of one of her hands and swung her around to face him and laughed back down at her. Other members of the wedding party joined their group and danced with and around them, but song after song came on, and he never moved from her side.

“Water?” he said in her ear after they’d been on the dance floor for a long time.

“Yes, please.” She walked with him over to the bar.

She glanced up at the ornate clock over the bar, surprised at how late it had gotten. And how much she didn’t want this night to end. Damn it, it had been fun to be Drew’s fake girlfriend, but she knew that once the clock struck midnight, so to speak, the fairy tale would be all over.

He leaned against the bar, his jacket off, his bow tie untied, a little sweaty and disheveled from dancing. Good Lord, this guy was hot.

He rolled up his sleeves, exposing his tan forearms. She wanted to run her fingers up and down them and feel how warm and strong they were.

She needed to stop letting her imagination run away with her.

“Um,” she said. “It’s getting late, and if I want to make the last BART train back to the East Bay, I should probably leave pretty soon.”

Why had she said that? Why, when she was standing next to a hot guy, basically panting over him? If she was Maddie, hell, if she was Amy, she would have grabbed one of those hot forearms and wrapped it around her body, letting him know what she wanted without having to say anything. Sadly, she was Alexa, so she would flee instead.

He put his water bottle down and looked at her.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” she said. Olivia and Maddie would get mad at her for not throwing herself at him, but they didn’t understand that she just didn’t know how. Plus, rejection from this guy was the last thing her self-esteem needed. Talk about the opposite of getting back on the horse; that would make her avoid horses, and stables, and all farm animals for another few years. So to speak.

He stepped closer to her and put his hand on her waist. Her hand landed on his arm, and, without even meaning to, she ran her fingers up and down. Oh God, touching him like this was as good as she’d thought it would be.

“Or”—he looked straight down into her eyes—“you could stay.”

A question was in his eyes, and a smile hovered over his lips. His thumb drew slow circles on her hip and then moved up her side to her ribs. His other hand moved up to her face and traced the outline of her lips with his fingers.

She shivered.

He waited.

“Or,” she said, “I could stay.”

About the Author

Jasmine Guillory is a graduate of Wellesley College and Stanford Law School. She is a Bay Area native who has towering stacks of books in her living room, a cake recipe for every occasion, and upwards of 50 lipsticks.