It Had to Be You by Georgia Clark

I rarely DNF, but this is one of them, joining the ranks of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up aka the Kondo method.

I DNF-ed because the way someone described this book was not the way it turned out to be. It was sold as, “wedding planners finding love but told from the POV of the wedding couples.” Well, it’s DEFINITELY NOT THAT. I got through Part 1/Act 1 and it’s your basic multi-POV story. There is exposition for most of part 1 and then the last half of that section deals with one wedding.

The two MC’s are Liv and Savannah, the former was Eliot’s wife and the latter was Eliot’s mistress, are stuck running Liv and Eliot’s wedding planning business together, but this story also follows like three other people and I kept finding myself more drawn to those characters, the shorter chaptered characters, and wondering if they were added in because Liv and Savannah are just. so. boring.

If I’ve learned anything from playing role-playing games, is that you cannot play a lone wolf character. Characters need to interact with the world, with each other, and Liv is a lone wolf. She was always forced into situations she didn’t want to be in. She showed her displeasure at being in them at all times. There was nothing about her that I felt was redemptive and I’ve been a wedding planner! Her being excellent at her job should have been a huge draw to me, but knowing she was just going through the motions and kinda hating it the whole time, ruined her for me.

I also find infidelity storylines to be huge turnoffs for me. Books are an escape and I don’t want to escape into the world where my spouse was unfaithful to me. I already carry a huge, and probably-should-talk-to-someone-about-it amount of imposter syndrome when it comes to my marriage. I just cannot go there.

The side characters are LOVELY though, just not enough to redeem the MCs for me which is a bummer because I was really excited about this one. -Ford