Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Don't Kiss the Bride - Special Edition: An Age Gap, Marriage of Convenience Romance

I definitely didn’t expect this one to go the way it did. Going into this one, I thought we would see a man significantly older than the FMC trying to help her in some way that involved them getting married. Maybe one night, they would’ve crossed that line and given in to their feelings. After that night, they would’ve been like, yeah, shouldn’t happened, let’s never do that again, or something that would’ve freaked the FMC out to the point where she just bolts in the middle of the night or while he’s at work and leaves a note explaining how sorry she is for it even happening. Then, years later, she’s in college, and she finds a new man in her life that she wants to marry, but she’s already married, so she has to return to her small town, back to her husband, and get divorced so she can marry this new man. When she reappears, the MMC realizes that she’s his one true love regardless of their age difference and refuses to just sign it all over without a fight, and the book would’ve been focused on him trying to win her back. Kind of giving off some Sweet Home Alabama vibes. So that’s definitely not what happens in this book. Lucky is 34, and Skylar is just 18, so there is a considerable age gap. Heck, she’s still in high school for most of this book. They do get married pretty early in the book. Still, he’s making it more like an arrangement so that she can get medical insurance so she can finally get help since she’s in a really rough place. She has a terrible home life and no support system. This is very much a damsel in distress situation. There is a spark between them, but he’s very concerned about the age gap and what people will think since they live in a tiny town where everyone seems to know everyone. These two had a hard time ever getting on the same page. It got really rough seeing her trying to figure out not just her feelings but how everything is supposed to work since she’s never really had a relationship since she always kept people an arm’s length away and was bullied really bad in school. I thought this age gap would be cringy, but it worked for this story. I even got behind the whole miscommunication trope because it worked for this story. However, the book kind of took that trope and ran it hard. It got rough towards the end of the book because we, as the reader, knew how they both felt the entire book, but they kept just letting each other pass through their fingers instead of talking, and I just got tired of it after a while. It is a really heart-wrenching story, and in the end, even though I was ready for it to be done, I was kind of left wanting a little bit more loose end tied up. Like, I really wished we had some follow-up with at least her mom. It was like after she left, there was no update from her, and I would’ve liked to know if she was still hoarding or if she was trying to work on it in the end. There were other characters that I was left curious about, but we don’t get closure, and this is a standalone.

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anovelglimpse's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Loveable characters? Yes

3.5

The whole idea of an 18-year-old high school senior and a 34-year-old man getting married and moving in together, even if it's just for health insurance reasons, really pushes my boundaries. That being said, Cole mostly made this book work for me. I loved the friendship and emotional connection between Skylar and Lucky. I am happy those things came first before they truly fell for each other in a romantic way. There was a whole lot of ups and downs with their relationship, but the ending made it worth it.

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skyhazzard's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was so good, did not disappoint. This age gap was done so well I never once thought that it was weird for them to be together. They just clicked so well and had developed such a cute friendship.

Both of their backgrounds left them in a similar state of feeling abandoned and like they weren’t worth staying for so there a lot of inner turmoil that comes up throughout the book and puts a wrench into their relationship romantically.

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antidietleah's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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lindslikesbooks's review against another edition

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emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

I am all for a marriage of convenience and age-gap combination but this was not the one for me.

Plot:
Skylar is an 18-year-old highschool student who has a crappy home life. Her dad left and her mom is a hoarder. She has health issues and an eating disorder stemming from her fears around unsafe food as a child living with a hoarder. Enter Jude aka Lucky. Lucky, a 38-year-old, construction worker sees her messing with her broken down car so he offers her a ride. They form a little connection as friends. Then he finds out she's sick and he's like "let's get married so I can give you health insurance!" So she's like, this isn't creepy at all and moves in with them. But don't worry, he wants to do the right thing and let her mom know. But her mom doesn't care like at all. So they get married but just as friends but that clearly won't last.

I love these tropes but they way it was executed felt ick to me. If you are going to combine age gap and marriage of convenience, please let the characters not be so immature/annoying. I struggled with this one. It gave major daddy issues but not in a sexy way. In a sad, "this poor girl" way. The author wrote in a lot about how they tried to fight their attraction but it just felt off for me. Like if you want the age gap to not feel creepy, don't give their dynamic a weird vibe by creating a reliance on the MMC for health issues.

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flytouni's review against another edition

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emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? No

2.5

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bookgrrl's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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