The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce

 

Summary (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.

Review: I don't typically love second chance romances, but this was one of the better ones I've read. I particularly appreciated that Eli struggles with anxiety, and this was a major cause of things going south between the pair the first go around. It was just nice to see someone struggling with anxiety represented and how it has a profound impact on his life. I also thought the author did a great job of turning the fact that the couple had already been together into a source of tension. Every interaction was laced with their history and Georgia can vividly imagine what it would be like to be intimate with Eli again because she knows exactly what it is like. I also thought the paper rings that Eli made for Georgia were incredibly sweet!! I love how much he loves her and how hard he works for her and their relationship. 

On the other hand, I thought what brought the pair back together was incredibly far-fetched. The two are reunited because their mutual friend has wedding complications from hell and needs them to basically re-plan his wedding last minute. Maybe I just have not encountered friends like this, but it just seemed improbably that 1) friends would drop everything to plan someone else's wedding but 2) the couple would want friends to make all the decisions for them. I just couldn't buy it. 

Also, I understand that Eli was consumed by anxiety and stuck in a terrible cycle of being consumed by his job, but why did it take him five whole years to try to get Georgia back? Five years?! The timeline was wild. Maybe that's the time it took to make it possible to try again, but it felt to me that one or both would have changed so much in that period that it wouldn't work. 

This was really cute, and I liked a lot of elements about it. But I also wonder if it has enough to make it stick out and be memorable compared to other rom com books I have read. 

Stars: 3.5