Author: Susan Hatler
Publisher: Hatco Publishing
Publication Date: April 2017
Genre: Chick Lit / Contemporary Romance
Buy the Book: Amazon | BN | Audible
Description: Maid of honor Sarah Carlton hasn’t failed at anything since her high school science project was sabotaged by a relentless competitor. So, she’ll do whatever it takes to make her best friend Jill’s wedding absolutely perfect. That includes taking the next flight out of Sacramento to retrieve the panicked bride’s cherished family wedding charm from her late grandmother’s attic in Atlanta Georgia.
Unfortunately, someone else has offered to come to the bride’s rescue—best man Ben Atkins, the same man who destroyed Sarah’s high school science project all those years ago. Now he wants to one-up her by retrieving the charm first. Sarah refuses to let that happen. The race is on.
When Sarah and Ben arrive in Atlanta, instead of finding the wedding charm there’s a letter from the bride’s grandmother directing the bride and groom to complete a series of tasks in order to prove their commitment to each other. With the wedding only two days away, Sarah and Ben must join forces by pretending to be the bride and groom in order to earn the wedding charm. Should be a cinch. After all, how hard can it be to fake true love for forty-eight hours?
My Thoughts: Some would describe this story as an enemies to lovers story, but Sarah and Ben really weren’t hateful to one another or at war. Instead, this was more a story involving two people have known each other their entire lives and were pretty competitive with one another. There were some hard feelings on Sarah’s part because of her high school science project being destroyed, but had these two spent a half hour having a discussion, that would have been cleared up very quickly.
Sarah’s best friend, Jill is getting married. Sarah is the maid of honor and Ben is the best man. Jill is distraught because she was unable to retrieve a family heirloom from her grandmother’s house and believes her marriage will be doomed to fail if she gets married without it. With the wedding set to take place in Sacramento in a few short days, Sarah and Ben decide to go to Atlanta to retrieve the charm and save the wedding. Of course, Sarah is in full competition mode, convinced that Ben is only going to try to one up her as she has believed he has done all their lives. I was really happy that they decide to join forces in Atlanta and with the help of a lost dog they rescue and name Moose, it appears they have a truce and there are a lot of unresolved feelings. The catch is that retrieving the heirloom is not going to be a quick task. They have to go on a wild scavenger hunt of sorts, pretending to be the engaged couple and pretending to be in love to convince the friends of Jill’s grandmother that they deserve the heirloom.
The tasks they are assigned to do were a lot of fun, but with the ticking clock, Sarah and Ben don’t have a lot of time to enjoy the ambience of Atlanta. I especially loved that one of the tasks required them to go to an Atlanta Braves baseball game and have their picture taken at home plate. The quick thinking and ingenuity this couple uses to accomplish the tasks were quite entertaining and fun to witness.
This book was my first experience with the writing of Susan Hatler and I will be looking for more of her work. I immensely enjoyed her writing style and the attention to detail she gives to Atlanta and Buckhead, which gave me a real sense of being there. I loved Sarah and Ben and thought they made a great team and the addition of Moose the lost dog added more charm and fun to this story.
My Final Verdict: Overall, this was a great story and I highly recommend it to fans of contemporary romances, stories involving dogs and scavenger hunts as well as stories that feature characters who are willing to go the extra mile for their friends and for each other.
Thank you to the publisher, Hatco Publishing, who provided an advance reader copy of this book via NetGalley.
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