From the publisher:
Estranged exes must stick close together to save their best friend’s wedding after a string of disasters in this swoony and steamy second-chance romance from the USA Today bestselling author of You, with a View.
Georgia Woodward lives by her lists, none more so than the one about her ex, Eli Mora. It’s full of the ironclad dos and don’ts they’ve been following since she returned to the Bay Area after their cataclysmic breakup five years ago.
With the wedding of their mutual best friend, Adam, looming, and them about to step into their roles as best woman and man, Georgia’s never needed it more. She refuses to threaten their tight-knit friend group with her messy—and still very present—feelings. The rules on that list will keep her cool, calm, and compartmentalized.
What’s not on her list? Eli arriving from New York with a new rule-breaking attitude or the all-inclusive venue burning to the ground, leaving the bride and groom in dire straits. Nor does she anticipate Adam asking her and Eli to help him make a miracle happen. Together.
As Georgia and Eli rush up to Napa Valley to pull off the perfect wedding, their old chemistry comes back in technicolor. Somewhere between cake tastings gone wrong, disastrous DJ auditions, and Eli’s heated attention, Georgia starts recognizing the man she fell in love with before. And if she lets herself break her rules, she might find what they’re building isn’t the something old that ruined them—it’s a chance at something new.
“Touching, full of complicated emotions, and expertly written, romance fans will thoroughly enjoy this latest from Joyce.”—Library Journal (starred review)
https://amzn.to/3YbhTAC
Scroll down to read an excerpt!
This is the very definition of a swoony romance! Georgia, Adam, and Eli grew up together as best friends. They all had difficult childhoods but were always there for one another. When Adam meets “the one” his friends become his best man and best woman, so when the wedding venue burns to the ground a couple of weeks before the event, Eli and Georgia spring into action.
There’s only one little hitch; Eli and Georgia had fallen in love, and even lived together in New York. But Eli’s financial insecurities had him working 24/7 and eventually, Georgia couldn’t take it anymore and moved back to the west coast. They never really broke up or fought, she just left and he let her. Eventually, Eli gets help and now that Georgia can barely look at him without feeling so much pain, he’s showing up.
As they plan a whole new wedding, their old feelings are constantly simmering below the surface until they can’t stop themselves. Georgia is trying very hard to guard her heart, but she doesn’t know how Eli feels and he is afraid of hurting her again. Things get really intense, but have no fear, a happy ending is guaranteed, and I loved it.
On a more personal note, I think this story moved me so much because I, too, had my wedding venue burn to the ground – metaphorically, at least. My husband and I had to plan a new wedding in less than two weeks. We had no venue, no music, no photographer, no money, nothing. Our parents were in Florida, we were in New York, and we were so young and didn’t know anything. Luckily, my mother had some really great friends, one of whom took us in and helped us plan the whole thing. She had planned her daughter’s bat mitzvah that year, so she took us in hand and saved our wedding. Another of my mom’s friends gave us piles of cash to pay for everything until our parents could get there. This book brought back a lot of those memories, and I’m happy to say that my husband and I recently celebrated our 43rd wedding anniversary!
7/2024 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
THE EX VOWS by Jessica Joyce. Berkley (July 16, 2024). ISBN: 978-0593548424. 400p.
Excerpt:
This wedding is cursed
“Not again,” I mutter.
To the untrained eye, this text probably looks like a joke, or the beginning of one of those chain emails our elders get duped into forwarding to twenty of their nearest and dearest, lest they inherit multigenerational bad luck.
In actuality, it’s been Adam’s mantra for the past eight months.
Adam is the brother I never had and I’m truly honored to be along for the ride on his wedding journey. But had sixth-grade Georgia anticipated I’d be fielding forty-seven daily texts from my more-unhinged-by-the-minute best friend, I would’ve thought twice about complimenting his Hannah Montana shirt the day we met.
My Spidey senses tingle with this text, though. It hasn’t been delivered in aggressive caps lock, nor is it accompanied by a chaotic menagerie of GIFs (my kingdom for a Michael Scott alternative). Whatever has happened now might actually be an emergency.
Then again, the wedding is ten days away. At this point, anything that isn’t objectively awesome is a disaster.
I pluck my phone off my desk, typing, What’s the damage?
A bubble immediately pops up, disappears, reappears, then stops again.
“Great sign.”
It’s nearly four p.m. on Wednesday, the day before my week-long PTO for the wedding starts, and I still have half a page of unchecked boxes on my to-do list, plus a detailed While I’m Away email to draft for my boss. I can’t leave Adam hanging in his moment of need, though. What kind of best woman would I be?
No better than the largely absent best man? comes the uncharitable punchline. I slam the door on that thought. It’s not like I’ve minded executing most of the best-people activities; it’s been a godsend for multiple reasons. It’s just so typical of him to-
I catch my own eye in the computer’s reflection, delivering a silent message with the downward slash of my dark eyebrows: Shut. Up. I’d rather think about curses than anything tangentially related to the subject of Eli Mora.
Not that I believe in curses at all.
Except . . . deep down, I do worry that Adam’s been hounded by bad vibes since he proposed to his fiancée, Grace Song, on New Year’s Eve. Their plans have involved a comedy of errors that have escalated from bummer to oh shit: the wrong wedding dress ordered by the bridal salon, names misspelled on their printed wedding invitations twice, and-the one that nearly got me to believe-their wedding planner quit three months ago because his Bernedoodle had amassed such a following on social media that he was making triple his salary as her manager.
For Adam, whose natural temperament hovers somewhere near live wire, it’s been a constant test of his sanity. Even Grace, who’s brutally chill, the perfect emotional foil for Adam, has been fraying.
But then, she would’ve been fine eloping. Every new disaster probably only further solidifies the urge to book it to Vegas.
Adam’s texts tumble over one another:
Georgia
Our fucking DJ
BROKE THEIR HIP
LINE DANCING AT A BACHELORETTE PARTY
IN NASHVILLE
I need to know what I’ve done in my 28 years on this dying earth that is causing this to happen
I start to type, but he beats me to it.
That was rhetorical, Woodward, DON’T
Clearly Adam’s shifting out of his panic fugue, so I shift into fix-it mode. It’s the reason he came to me out of everyone-he knows I’ll step up without hesitation.
Deep breath. Nothing’s burned to the ground, right? I text back. This is problematic but not fatal. We’ll come up with a new list.
The bubbles of doom pop up again and I wait. Again.
I wish I could say my eagerness to jump into this shitstorm is fully altruistic, but since I got back from a six-month work stint in Seattle three months ago, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen Adam, all wedding-related. This has been the only way to reliably stay in his orbit.
For now, anyway.
Excerpted from The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce Copyright © 2024 by Jessica Joyce. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Posted by Stacy Alesi 
Stacy Alesi's BookBitch.com™ 