The Junior Bridesmaid by Amy Baker - Released March 5, 2014

I bought this book for $2.99 on Amazon because the premise sounded good and the reviews were good both there and on GoodReads. Although I finished it, I'm honestly not sure why.

BOOK DESCRIPTION: Sixteen-year-old Delilah Welling never understood why Darcy Strong despised her so much. Especially since their mothers had been friends for a lifetime. So when Delilah is asked to be The Junior Bridesmaid in Darcy's wedding, Delilah is understandably surprised and reluctant to say yes. Upon her mother's insistence, Delilah finally agrees determined to look at the bright side.

And there couldn’t be a brighter side than Hugh Rowen, a.k.a. the groom. Delilah has always been in love with Hugh and could never understand what a nice guy like Hugh was doing with a wench like Darcy.

Before the wedding, Delilah discovers that the bride-to-be is keeping a torrid secret. Fearful that she will hurt Hugh, she remains silent, going about her Junior Bridesmaid duties as planned.

Until...

All hell breaks loose during the wedding ceremony. Embarrassed and devastated, Delilah flees the wedding. But not before hurting the love of her life.

Twelve years later, Delilah is 28 and living a happy existence in New York. Until one day when she receives a message addressed to JUNIOR? Has Hugh hunted her down twelve years later to exact revenge or is he in New York for a different reason entirely? Either way, twelve years is a long time to wait to find out!



WHAT I THOUGHT:

Delilah, our heroine, had no depth. At the beginning of the novel, we find her 16 and in love with her arch Nemesis's (Darcy) fiance. Did I mention she's the junior bridesmaid in the wedding? Apparently 21-year-old Hugh, our fiance, is also smitten with Delilah and tells his friends what he'd like to sexually do to her if only she were legal. Um, not cool. If you're going to write about an older guy with a crush on a younger girl, make it sweet and when they reunite years later, reveal the non-creepy crush. That reveal just turned me off right away. Added to that, the author didn't provide a reason why Hugh, who liked Delilah, was marrying the obnoxious Darcy. I wasn't feeling any motivation for any of these characters to be acting the way they were or following the paths they were following.

Despite the reviews exclaiming how hilarious the wedding situation was, I was not amused. Basically, Delilah shouts out the secret Darcy has been harboring from Hugh in front of everyone, ending the nuptials and causing Darcy to hide in her house and out of town for the next decade or so.

Fast forward - 12 years later - Hugh is in Delilah's city, NYC, professing his love for her. He's always loved her. Now she will be his. Yadda yadda. Immediately, they're moving in together (what??) and are "in love" with one another. If those details were hard to believe, the rest of the book gets super fun. Suddenly, we're in the middle of a high school relationship, even though Delilah is 28 and Hugh is 33. One of Delilah's coworkers is spreading lies about her to keep her away from Hugh and like a thick-headed high school jock, he believes every single lie, no questions asked. He's angry with Delilah every other minute and Delilah always seems to be left standing with her jaw dropped wondering exactly what just happened. I can't fault her there. I was doing the same thing on my end. Of course, by the end, after several spats and some awkward "sex" scenes, the lovers unite and probably live a long life full of immature flights and skirmish's. Good riddance.

As I said, Delilah was pretty 2-dimensional, but I didn't hate her. Even the evil coworker Stacy was tolerable, but I could not for the life of me like Hugh. He was a controlling arrogant asshole who has temper tantrums when he doesn't get his way. As someone who's been in a few emotionally controlling relationships, there were red flags popping up all over the place in the book where Hugh was concerned. There was absolutely no reason the adult Delilah, who had a crush on an older guy as a child, mostly due to his good looks, would ever want a man like this unless she enjoyed narcissistic behavior. Ugh.

Overall, what could have been a fun story about adults connecting later in life, after harboring a decade of crushes, left me wishing someone else wrote this. There were also some grammar mistakes mixed throughout. The author used "threw" when she should have used "through" and there was even a "your" when it should have been "you're." Just annoyed me.

I've never given this bad of a review, but I will say one thing for the book: It did get a strong reaction from me, so I guess that's something. I give it 1 1/2 stars for the plot idea.