Title: Fathers of the Bride
Author: Marshall Thornton
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 236 Pages
Category: Contemporary Romance
Rating: 5 Stars
At a Glance: This book hits all the right notes—both the highs and the lows—on its way to Miles and Andrew’s romantic reconciliation. From the hostility of warring soon-to-be exes, to the poignance of two parents preparing to watch their daughter embark on a new chapter in her life, to the joyful twist in a new beginning for an old love, Marshall Thornton delivered this story beautifully.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: After more than two decades together, Andrew Lane and Miles Kettering-Lane are going through a nasty divorce. Not only are they unraveling their relationship but also their business—Miles once had a popular home show on cable with Andrew serving as his producer/manager—the failure of which they blame on each other. Now, they’d be happy to never, ever see each other again. But the daughter they both adore, Kelly, announces she’s getting married, and that means one very important thing: a wedding.
Thrown together, at event after event—meeting the in-laws, planning the wedding, throwing an elaborate engagement party—the two clash over everything until, their future in-laws, Bradley and Pudge Lincoln and Terry and Lissa Collins, try to take over the entire wedding. The Lincoln-Collins’ are very wealthy, to quote Pudge, “People think we’re in the one percent but that’s so embarrassing. We’re barely in the two percent!”
Andrew and Miles realize they have to work together in order to compete with the overbearing Lincoln-Collins’ and give their daughter the wedding she deserves. Along the way, they realize things just might not be over between them.
Review: It’s long been said that the opposite of love is not hate, but the opposite of both is apathy. And, of course, Shakespeare had the right of it when he wrote “The course of true love never did run smooth.” Author Marshall Thornton has penned a husbands-to enemies-to lovers-to husbands again story that proves both of these axioms are, in fact, absolutes in a romantic journey that happens to coincide with what turns out to be a wedding planning fiasco.
A Bridezilla? Please, not even close. Kelly Kettering-Lane is lovely, as is her fiancé, Avery Collins, but she wants nothing to do with planning her own wedding. Nothing. She and Avery both want it to be a small affair with as little fuss made as possible and, more importantly, with as little environmental impact as possible, so Kelly tasks her fathers with making it all happen—her fathers who just so happen to be in the midst of a rather bitter, contentious, years-long divorce. Then throw in a couple of Momzillas? . . . In-lawzillas? . . . however you slice it, the groom’s mother and stepmother are dreadful, and I’d have gladly punted the majority of the Lincoln-Collinses straight into the sun. They proved over and over again that they had far more money than self- or social-awareness, and I absolutely loved being so put off by the lot of them, which added an extra dollop of discomfort to my already maxed-out levels of secondhand embarrassment watching their cringeworthy shenanigans unfold.
The heart of Fathers of the Bride may be the wedding, but its soul is the unholy acrimony that exists between Miles and Andrew. They haven’t spoken directly to each other in years—that’s what their high-priced lawyers are there for—but they dearly love their daughter and want nothing more than to give her the wedding of her dreams. They both know the only way they’ll achieve that is to call a truce, which is only slightly less problematic than their other concerns. Namely, they don’t believe the wedding Kelly is asking for is anything like the dream wedding she should have; not to mention they do not want to be shown up by the filthy rich, exceedingly tone-deaf in-laws who are throwing what is sure to be an extravagant engagement party; but then there’s the fact that Miles and Andrew aren’t made of money, and, well, you get the gist of it. What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger . . .
This book hits all the right notes—both the highs and the lows—on its way to Miles and Andrew’s romantic reconciliation, including when the author breaks the fourth wall and allows his leading men to speak to us, their audience. I loved that as a stylistic choice for the way it engaged me and involved me and grounded me in the story and offered me a front row seat to everything. There are two compelling sides to their story, and somewhere in the middle is where their marriage went to die. What Miles and Andrew proved to me is that sometimes love can be a messy, messy thing, but when that love is deep and abiding, still there underneath the anger and resentment and mistakes, anything can happen.
From the hostility of warring soon-to-be exes, to the poignance of two parents preparing to watch their daughter embark on a new chapter in her life, to the joyful twist in a new beginning for an old love, Marshall Thornton delivered this story beautifully.
You can buy Fathers of the Bride here:
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