A review by patelyne
Nearlywed by Nicolas DiDomizio

4.0

Up until his divorce Ray was a click bait writer, marriage obsessed since childhood. Since then he’s a pinch more private, a lot more disillusioned. 

That changes after a chance meeting with Kip, a bit older and a lot more private. Also divorced, but from a woman (and still mostly closeted, this will be a recurring issue for them)

But time has passed, and now they’re living together in the burbs, and engaged. During the compromises between Ray’s public wedding extravaganza dreams and Kip’s desire for a private courthouse formality, one sticking point was that Ray wanted to go to the same resort his parents did before their wedding for an ‘earlymoon’ - basically a pre wedding honeymoon, which I had never heard of, but sounds kind of awesome if you could swing it.

Ray’s boss wants him to report on it - of course - and to spite Kip’s resistance he goes for it. His interviews are not going as expected. Flirtations to full on propositions, faces from the past, and a series of fights that put his future marriage at risk, all make his earlymoon far from the perfect week he’d imagined. 

For me, there were so many points where this read more rom-dram than the expected rom-com. In fact for a while I was actively rooting against this couple (and as someone that demands a HEA with every romance, I’m wasn’t sure what that said about me)

That said, the story was super interesting. I was fully invested in seeing how things turned out, and the ending did not disappoint. I especially liked the final essay/article in contrast to how the story opened.