By: Lauren Layne
Releasing July 26, 2016
Pocket Books
Pocket Books
To Have And To Hold
Wedding Belles Series
Sex and the City meets The Wedding Planner in The Wedding Belles, her sizzling brand new contemporary romance series about three ambitious wedding planners who can make any bride’s dream come true…but their own.
Discovering her fiancé is an international conman just moments before they exchange vows devastates celebrity wedding planner Brooke Burke’s business—and breaks her heart. Now a pariah in Los Angeles, she seeks a fresh start in New York City and thinks she’s found it with her first bridal client, a sweet, if slightly spoiled, hotel heiress. Then she meets the uptight businessman who’s holding the purse springs.
Seth Tyler wishes he could write a blank check and be done with his sister’s fancy-pants wedding. Unfortunately, micromanaging the event is his only chance at proving Maya’s fiancé is a liar. Standing directly in his way is the stunning blonde wedding planner whose practiced smiles and sassy comebacks both irritate and arouse him. He needs Brooke’s help. But can he persuade a wedding planner on a comeback mission to unplan a wedding? And more importantly, how will he convince her that the wedding she should be planning…is theirs?
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I was eager to begin this series after reading the novella taster From This Day Forward. Who doesn't love a wedding and a happy ever after?
Seth Tyler became CEO of Tyler Hotel Group after his father died from a heart attack. It's a career move he aspired to, but not so soon and now he's head of the family too. When his younger sister announces her engagement, he's suspicious about the true intentions of the groom. After all, Maya Tyler is a rich woman and the timeline for a wedding heightens his doubts about Neil Garrett's integrity. When the wedding planner mistakes him for the groom, he hopes the stunning blonde will help him prove his suspicions, only the outcome has consequences he never envisaged.
When her ex-fiancé was arrested at the altar just as they were about to say their wedding vows, Brooke Baldwin is left humiliated. With a new job at The Wedding Belles, she's determined to make a fresh start in New York. Her first assignment is to arrange the wedding for the Tyler family, an opportunity to organise the nuptials with an opened ended budget. Only she doesn't expect the man holding the purse strings to have a strong influence over her too.
As heroes go, Seth is flawed, cynical to relationships and likes to take control. He makes choices based on his belief of doing the right thing but somehow his best-laid plans are opposite to the desired effect. His imperfection are adorable and deep down his heart is always well meaning and sincere, if only he could change his way of doing things...he's direct and too opinionated.
I adored the fact Brooke tried to look past any negativity about Maya's fiancé Neil. She's a woman who had her dreams destroyed by a fraudster, yet she still believes in love...at least for clients.
"No man at all, really. No falling in love. Not ever again."
Seth and Brooke have an instant, intense attraction that neither can deny. I like that both the protagonists are honest about the sizzling chemistry between themselves.
"I'm not looking for anything...romantic. Or sexual. This thing between us-I'm not going to pretend it's not there, but I'm also not going to act on it….."
Both are often blunt with their opinions of situations and each other.
"What?" she asked.
"A dirty vodka martini...Somehow that seems to be exactly the perfect drink for you."
Brooke tilted her head. "Do you always mean for things to sound the way they do when they come out of your mouth?"
"How's that?"
"Provocative."
"What's provocative about repeating your drink order?"
"The dirty part," she muttered, looking away.
To Have And To Hold is full of the elements that I've come to expect when reading a Lauren Layne novel. The witty dialogue, sexy scenes and secondary characters that pull together to create a wonderful literary scene. I'm left with an overwhelming feel good feeling and a desire to read more from the series...Hello, Logan!
Seth Tyler became CEO of Tyler Hotel Group after his father died from a heart attack. It's a career move he aspired to, but not so soon and now he's head of the family too. When his younger sister announces her engagement, he's suspicious about the true intentions of the groom. After all, Maya Tyler is a rich woman and the timeline for a wedding heightens his doubts about Neil Garrett's integrity. When the wedding planner mistakes him for the groom, he hopes the stunning blonde will help him prove his suspicions, only the outcome has consequences he never envisaged.
When her ex-fiancé was arrested at the altar just as they were about to say their wedding vows, Brooke Baldwin is left humiliated. With a new job at The Wedding Belles, she's determined to make a fresh start in New York. Her first assignment is to arrange the wedding for the Tyler family, an opportunity to organise the nuptials with an opened ended budget. Only she doesn't expect the man holding the purse strings to have a strong influence over her too.
As heroes go, Seth is flawed, cynical to relationships and likes to take control. He makes choices based on his belief of doing the right thing but somehow his best-laid plans are opposite to the desired effect. His imperfection are adorable and deep down his heart is always well meaning and sincere, if only he could change his way of doing things...he's direct and too opinionated.
I adored the fact Brooke tried to look past any negativity about Maya's fiancé Neil. She's a woman who had her dreams destroyed by a fraudster, yet she still believes in love...at least for clients.
"No man at all, really. No falling in love. Not ever again."
Seth and Brooke have an instant, intense attraction that neither can deny. I like that both the protagonists are honest about the sizzling chemistry between themselves.
"I'm not looking for anything...romantic. Or sexual. This thing between us-I'm not going to pretend it's not there, but I'm also not going to act on it….."
Both are often blunt with their opinions of situations and each other.
"What?" she asked.
"A dirty vodka martini...Somehow that seems to be exactly the perfect drink for you."
Brooke tilted her head. "Do you always mean for things to sound the way they do when they come out of your mouth?"
"How's that?"
"Provocative."
"What's provocative about repeating your drink order?"
"The dirty part," she muttered, looking away.
To Have And To Hold is full of the elements that I've come to expect when reading a Lauren Layne novel. The witty dialogue, sexy scenes and secondary characters that pull together to create a wonderful literary scene. I'm left with an overwhelming feel good feeling and a desire to read more from the series...Hello, Logan!
4.5 stars
***arc generously received courtesy of Pocket Books via NetGalley***
***arc generously received courtesy of Pocket Books via NetGalley***
It’s not as though Brooke had meant to start dating a con man. She certainly didn’t intend to get engaged to one.
But that’s the thing about con mans. The good ones were good at, well . . . the con.
And Clay Battaglia had been a good one. The best, actually, if you took the word of the FBI agent who’d debriefed Brooke and her family—while she was still in her wedding dress.
Turns out that while Brooke had been happily building her wedding-planning company, Clay had been quietly and competently been getting away with every white-collar crime in the book. While she’d been planning their wedding, he’d apparently been knee-deep in yet another Ponzi scheme.
Brooke hadn’t even known what a Ponzi scheme was when the FBI had told her.
She did now.
Following Clay’s arrest, she spent weeks researching white-collar crime. Wanting to know what he’d been up to all those times he’d quietly kissed her forehead late at night and told her he needed to make some phone calls for “work.” Wanting to know what her life would have been like if the FBI hadn’t taken him down before they’d exchanged vows.
Still, while Brooke would be ever grateful that she’d learned the truth before she’d become Mrs. Clay Battaglia, she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that the timing of it had stung just a little bit.
If they’d only taken him down a day before. Heck, even an hour before.
But no.
Just moments after Brooke kissed her father’s cheek and prepared to marry the man she loved at the wedding she’d poured her heart into, the FBI stormed—yes, stormed—the church.
Clay was in handcuffs before she even registered what was happening.
Numbly she watched as he listened to his Miranda rights at the precise moment he should have been listening to the vows she’d spent months writing.
And as reality slowly sunk in, Brooke waited. Waited for him to look at her. To look at her and say that it was all a lie. All one big misunderstanding, and that they’d be on their way to Bermuda as planned by tomorrow.
He didn’t.
He didn’t even apologize.
No, the man she’d loved for two years with every fiber of her being merely smiled at her and then shrugged.
There’d been plenty of photos taken that day, but that was the one that made it onto the front page of every major newspaper on the West Coast.
“The Greatest Con of All.” “Arrested by Love.” And her personal favorite, courtesy of her very own LA Times: “White-Collar Bride.”
The stories all read pretty much like you’d expect. About Clay, mostly, and the litany of accusations against him, but also about Brooke.
The papers had stopped short of defamation, but the implications were there. She was clueless and ditzy at best, a potentially overlooked accomplice at worst. Completely oblivious to the fact that she’d been sharing a roof with the most nefarious white-collar criminal in a generation—or pretending to be.
None of that had bothered her. What had bothered her was that she’d been a fool. Self-absorbed, naive, and downright blind.
Brooke had been dodging dumb-blonde jokes for most of her life, but the debacle with Clay was the first time she thought she might really, truly be deserving of the title.
She hadn’t been surprised when new clients had stopped calling. Hadn’t been surprised when current clients canceled. Nobody wanted to hire that wedding planner.
Brooke had even been relieved, at first. In those first weeks after Clay’s arrest, she hadn’t been able to handle any talk of weddings. Not her own, and not other people’s.
But the worst part of all of this, the part that kept her up long into the lonely nights, wasn’t the negative effect on her career. No, the worst part was that sometimes, in the very darkest corner of her soul, she feared that she might still love Clay, at least a little. Sure, her brain knew that all the things she’d loved about Clay had been a lie. Her brain understood that his name wasn’t even Clay.
But her heart? Her heart was having a harder time forgetting the way he always let her be the little spoon and tuck her cold feet against his warm calves. Or the way he’d brought her coffee in bed every morning. Or the way she’d come home after a long day with the worst sort of bridezilla and Clay would make them cocktails and sit on the deck with her, and watch the sunset and laugh.
She’d imagined that all their nights would be like that. All the nights for the rest of her life, with maybe with a couple of kids thrown into the mix eventually.
Brooke swallowed.
There wouldn’t be any more nights on the patio watching the sunset with Clay. Wouldn’t be any patio at all, because Brooke’s real estate broker had made it quite clear that she should be counting herself lucky to get a dishwasher in New York—a patio was out of the question.
So no patio. No Clay, or whatever his real name was.
No man at all, really.
No falling in love.
Not ever again.
Five years ago, she ditched her corporate career in Seattle to pursue a full-time writing career in Manhattan.
She writes smart romantic comedies with just enough sexy-times to make your mother blush, and in her ideal world, every stiletto-wearing, Kate Spade wielding woman would carry a Kindle stocked with Lauren Layne books.
When not bringing The Sexy, she likes to blog about her Instagram addiction, and why mean girls are the worst.
Rafflecopter Giveaway (Five (5) Exclusive Print Copies of FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, A Wedding Belles Novella)
