Review: Kissing the Maid of Honor by Robin Bielman

A Secret Wishes Novel

Pub. Date: May 13, 2013

Publisher: Entangled

Ebook

230 pages

If every wish we made came true, then we would miss out on some pretty great things. Case in point, Kissing the Maid of Honor. Before her best friend Vanessa’s wedding, Sela Sullivan drops a coin in a wishing well, wishing that Vanessa’s brother Luke would keep his distance throughout wedding festivities. Ten years before, when she was 15, and harboring a major crush on Luke - her best friends brother and her own brother’s best friend - she paid to kiss him in a kissing booth. It was everything she wanted her first kiss to be – until he absolutely humiliated her. Thankfully her wish doesn’t come true, Luke does not keep his distance, and both are ultimately very happy that they have had the chance to reconnect.

Switching the narrative between Sela and Luke’s perspectives works really. It allows a lot more insight into what both are thinking, and how genuinely concerned they are with how their family and friends will react to their growing relationship. The switching perspective really helps you buy the relationship, and root for Sela and Luke as a couple to finally get it together, and be together.

I found the majority of the novel to be fairly realistic. There are specific struggles and development that

the characters need to get through in order to really appreciate each other, and one of the best parts of the novel is seeing the two learn to depend and trust each other in order to move forward. Their were a few little language things that I didn’t feel were very contemporary, nor did they represent the characters very effectively. Luke for instance says things like ill words and warmed his heart. I don’t know a single mid-twenties male that would use or think those phrases.

My overall impression of the novel is that it was straightforward, cute, fun, and everything you want a light romance to be. I appreciated the cleanness of it in our age of 50 Shades of Grey. Bielman creates easy to like characters that you genuinely want to end happily ever after. Kissing the Maid of Honor is definitely a light, cute read that is perfect anytime of the year – but a really great beach read. The novel was exactly what I expected it to be, and what I really needed and wanted to read at the time, which is a really great thing.

Rating 7.5/10

** I received a copy of this novel from the publisher to read and honestly review. I was in no way compensated.