The Best Man’s Proposal is my third Entangled book since I became a reviewer for them, and I think it’s going to get my lowest rating so far. I was disappointed. But don’t worry, I’ll explain. The premise is important to understanding why I was disappointed, so we’ll start there.
Niki Hamilton is fresh out of her grad school program and wants to live abroad – that’s her only goal in life right now. She’s living with her sister and working for next to no money, but she’s been promised a transfer to London in the near future. All she has to do is keep it up, and it’s in the bag. After her ex texts her to break up on the day of her sister’s wedding, Niki needs a one-night escape. She finds it in Grant Powers, her new brother-in-law’s best man, who recently went through a pretty awful divorce. Grant is a firefighter, although he’s going to leave Miami for his parents’ farm in upstate New York as soon as the house he shared with his wife sells. On the morning after the Niki’s sister’s wedding, the newlyweds announce that Niki’s sister’s condo is being sold immediately to a developer, and now Niki needs a place to stay. Her brother-in-law offers up Grant’s house as a temporary location, and since no one knows they hooked up, Grant and Niki agree to that arrangement. So now they’re living together under the same roof after a one night stand – will they be able to keep their hands (and feelings) to themselves?
Spoiler: No, they will not. Because it’s a romance novel, ofc!
See how long that synopsis is? And that’s just to make the review make sense! It’s a bit unbelievable, which is where all of my disappointment stems from. But I digress – I’ll return to that in a bit.
Note: Finding three was kind of hard.
HELL YES. So one of the tenants of the story is that Niki’s boss promised her a transfer to London. I figured this was some desk job where there is a London office, but no! She’s helping him open and manage a nightclub! So I’m already like ???? and I wasn’t even a quarter of the way through the book yet. (For more context, he’s opening a new nightclub in London.) None of this is the actual problematic part, though. Niki’s boss legitimately believes that they’re going to get together. That’s why he keeps stringing her along, why he wants her to move to London in the first place. Isn’t that bananas? That should NEVER be a part of any job description, and definitely not an expectation once a person starts a job! So, not only that, but some tension of the story – one of the reasons why Grant thinks it won’t work between them – is that his ex-wife LEFT HIM FOR HER BOSS. AND HE THINKS IT’S A THING WOMEN DO. I was just. I don’t know what I was. But my problems with this book stem from the basis of the entire plot, so like… sorry. This book was doomed before I’d even finished it.
And this is all not taking into account the fact I HATED Niki as a character. She was whiny and kind of entitled and SO WISHY-WASHY I COULD CRY. Make a damn decision, girl! Before I make the decision to stop reading your words!
RatingA reminder of the rating scale:
- Red = DNF, I hated everything
- Orange = Ugh, no thank you
- Yellow = I mean, I’ve read worse, but there were problems
- Green = This was good, but not something I’d reread
- Blue = Oh my gosh, everyone should be reading this book
- Purple = This is the unicorn of books and I will be rereading it until the binding falls apart
I will give this book credit for one big thing – I read it super fast. So it didn’t feel like I wasted much time, even though I didn’t like the book very much. Keeping that and everything else I’ve said in mind, I’m going to give The Best Man’s Proposal a YELLOW rating. I’ve read worse, but I wouldn’t recommend this one to anyone without some major caveats.
A big thank you to Entangled Publishing and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my review in any way.
Happy reading!
-A.
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