Review by Booklist Review
Andie is an up-and-coming wedding-dress designer, and although she creates the focal points for so many brides' big days (with pockets!), she doesn't believe in love. She's only ever told one man that she loved him, and that was 10 years ago in college; he didn't say it back and then ghosted her. However, she needs money for her business, so she enters a reality dating show to get matched with a man to marry at first sight--and she is paired up with that same college ex-boyfriend, Kit. He enters the show to please his mom, who has cancer and wants to see him settled down. All the sparks from college are still there, but so are the hurt feelings, and having cameras watching their every move doesn't help. The book will tug at readers' heartstrings with relatable obstacles in the fantastical setting of a TV show. It's a second-chance, marriage-of-convenience mash-up delight, and the combination of romance tropes feels artful rather than piled on. This well-paced debut novel will appeal to contemporary-romance fans who like second-chance plotlines, and of course to reality-TV-show junkies, and the book is not too overbearing to alienate nonfans.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Pierce's top-notch debut puts a dishy spin on the second-chance romance and forced proximity tropes. Wedding dress designer Andie Dresser is on the precipice of a career breakthrough when a client cancels an important order. She'd been banking on using that money to fund her debut show at Atlanta Fashion Week, and now she must scramble for cash. Then she learns that First Look at Forever, a reality show in which "perfect strangers marry, then they have eight weeks together to decide: stay together or walk away," is filming locally and offers contestants $100,000 for their trouble if they choose to divorce at the end of the season. She signs up--only to find globe-trotting architect Kit Watson, the man who broke her heart in college, waiting for her at the altar. Kit is just as gobsmacked to see Andie. Will their televised marriage reignite their old spark? Pierce gets readers invested in her characters from the first page, and the romantic drama reads like an addictive season of reality TV--with a bonus peak behind the scenes. This will be catnip for romance fans. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT Former college sweethearts get a second chance at love through a reality show in Pierce's romantic comedy debut. Andie is an up-and-coming wedding dress designer vying for a spot at fashion week, but she's in need of funding. Her friend clues her in to a chance at $100,000--if she marries a complete stranger, agrees to participate in the First Look at Forever reality show, which would follow her for eight weeks, and signs divorce papers at the show's conclusion. Then there's Kit, who has hustled his entire adult life as a traveling resort architect to provide for his mother and pay her medical bills. She has one request that he can't refuse, that he try to find a life partner by appearing on First Look at Forever, where Kit's first look down the aisle at his new bride reveals not the stranger he was expecting but Andie, whom he left brokenhearted a decade prior. VERDICT Andie and Kit's second-chance romance follows a slow-burn path that is filled with corrective conversations, healing, and tenderness for each other's experiences, while the reality-show backdrop provides a contrasting tension.--Shanel Slater
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