If you like romance novels, The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory lives up to the hype. If you like fairly progressive interracial romance novels with strong female leads, I think you're going to love this book.
I jumped at the opportunity to get my hands on The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory prior to its release date. I included this book in my list of top book releases of 2018 because I'd heard so many good things about it. This book did not disappoint in any way.
I don't have much free time anymore. I'm not super rad and going on big adventures all the time, but between my two young kids and keeping up with my various websites, I rarely have time to just sit down and enjoy a good book. (Perhaps I should say that I rarely MAKE the time to curl up with a good book.) But from the very first sentence, I was hooked on The Wedding Date and couldn't put it down.
The Wedding Date is a fairly typical romance in many respects, with a great elevator meet cute, but what sets this story apart from most is that it features an African American woman and a white male. Both Alexa Monroe and Drew Nichols are strong protagonists that I found myself rooting for constantly. Alexa, especially, was a well-developed, charming, and strong female character. She's the chief of staff for the city of Berkley, California, and she's also a law school grad. She's a go-getter but she's also funny, and she has a strong love of donuts, to boot.
The story isn't earth-shattering, but in a way it is. I kept thinking that I'd never read an interracial romance before. It added some elements that wouldn't have been there otherwise and made me think quite a bit. Race is a sensitive subject, and Alexa is a woman who is both frequently the only African American in the room and she also advocates on behalf of lower-income families in a community that doesn't always care. Though it's a fiction book, I think it's a testament to Jasmine Guillory's superb writing that I felt like I was walking away with a better understanding – or at least a more enlightened take – of some of these issues.
I'm not going to lie – I had tears of happiness in my eyes at two points toward the end of the book, and I'm not much of a crier. It's a romance book so it should be pretty clear how the story ends, but Guillory even turns that on its head a bit.
Whether you read it tomorrow or save it for a couple of days at the beach, I think many of you will love the Wedding Date. I certainly did! I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads, though if available, I would have given it 4.5 stars. The book isn't perfect but I'm going to reward any book that I cannot put down!
