Catherine's Reviews > The Wedding Date

My rating makes me really sad because I had very high hopes for this novel.

I was debating whether or not to make it a bit higher, but if I'm being honest, I did not like this as a whole.

Basically, this book is about 30-something year old Alexa and Drew who meet on a stuck hotel elevator, get to talking, and agree that Alexa will attend Drew’s ex’s wedding as his plus one that weekend. That sounded to me like a recipe for the perfect guilty pleasure romantic comedy—I would 101% get sucked into this plot if it were a movie (like I did with the book). Unfortunately, it was a no from me.

Before I get into the problematic bits, I just want to acknowledge the really good parts of this book, because they existed too:

-An interracial couple as the main characters. I didn’t know this going into it, but I was really happy about the representation; I think that’s important! Why have I not read a book about an interracial couple before?!!!! (Can someone recommend me more?)
-Luke and Brendan. They were minor characters, but they were the only gay couple in the book. Again, I felt the representation was great.
-The switching narratives between Alexa and Drew. I usually don’t like that, but this was executed well in my opinion. When Alexa’s POV switched to Drew’s, and vice versa, the story would continue where the other person’s left off and it flowed perfectly.
-Carlos, Drew’s best friend. The scenes with him were my saving grace, honestly. Drew was an awful person to him for absolutely no reason though! If I learned one thing from this book, it’s that if your ‘friend’ yells obscenities at you (multiple times) and kicks you out of their house just because you try to get them to admit they like a girl, they’re a complete nutcase and you need to not be like Carlos and run as far away from them as possible, immediately. This review should just be a petition to get Carlos his own book, he deserved way better.
-The Pensive from Harry Potter was mentioned. Yup, that made it to my ‘good things about this book’ list. Not even going to explain why.

So, if I have a long list of good things then why did I give it such a low rating?

You need to understand that I went into this thinking that it would be cute. I mean, look at that cover; it’s adorable. What I got out of this was not cute, it was annoying. The first quarter centered on their meeting in the elevator and the actual Wedding Date. Beyond that, all that happened was long-distance, fly-back-and-forth-every-other-weekend, what-even-is-our-title, neither-of-us-wants-to-bring-it-up-even-though-we-both-know-we-like-each-other, nonsense. I wanted to read about mature adults... but what I actually read was the romantic biographies of every high school girl and boy I’ve ever met-and even they sometimes aren't this immature. This book exists because both of these people made things SO COMPLICATED.

The book should have been called Groundhog Day because every time they met, it would be the same routine: one of them flies out to the other, they pick up tacos or In N Out or pizza on their way home, they have sex a million times (I swear these people don’t even KNOW each other because that’s all they are doing, they barely speak), both of them think ‘I’m scared to ask what we are’, they fly back home and wonder what they are for the whole week but don’t bring it up, and they do this over again the following weekend. Don’t even get me started about what happened when it did finally get brought up. (view spoiler)[At the end, when Alexa abruptly left his apartment and flew home without telling him the morning after their fight, I was livid. He literally JUST told her the night before that them being together made him happy and he didn’t want her to go, but of course she was all ‘I was so scared of him telling me he just wanted to be friends so I had to leave before he did’……. I’m sorry, I’m all for women sticking up for women in situations where they feel led on by guys, but it was so obvious that he didn’t want to be just friends by that point. She never asked him straight up what they were throughout the course of the novel, and in fairness to her, he never brought it up either, but in that moment he spelled it out for her plain and simple and it was so childish of her to run away from him. (hide spoiler)]

I’ve never been this worked up by a book. I feel personally victimized by how it did a complete 180 from what I thought it was going to be.

Here are some quotes that made me cringe so much that I had to dog ear the pages to remember them:

“[Drew (through text)]: Great news! What did he say?
She made a mental note to reward him for giving her an exclamation point back.”

I just… I can’t. Reward him????? For an exclamation point???? Yikes.

“Not that she wasn’t allowed to go out when he wasn’t there, but he’d sort of pictured her sitting home on the couch missing him.”

She’s known you for a month, relax. Also, you refuse to tell her what you two are, let alone admit it to your best friend, but you still want her to sit at home moping without you?… stop.

“It was probably a real risk to pull her into the bedroom… but he was on call until six in the morning. Was he just supposed to not have sex with her tonight?”

It's literally all you've been doing, so for once, can you not? Please, for my sanity. Cause God knows it’s gone after this.