DO YOU TAKE THIS MAN

An accidental wedding planner and an even more accidental officiant must learn to purposefully stride toward love and commitment.

After RJ Brooks officiated at an impromptu celebrity wedding in a public park, she's become a walking paradox—a divorce attorney who is also a very popular wedding officiant. Although her side gig draws the side-eye from Gretchen, a senior lawyer she desperately hopes will mentor her, RJ is able to efficiently juggle her career as a lawyer with her interest in marrying couples until she’s knocked off balance—literally and figuratively—by Lear Campbell, a cousin of RJ’s favorite wedding planner, Penny. Lear, once a pro-football events manager, is substituting for Penny while she’s on leave. Lear has never had trouble charming people, especially because he tries very hard to be nice. But RJ is a challenge: She appears to be immune to his appeal, and recent events have caused Lear to reevaluate his proclivity for niceness. RJ decides not to work with Lear, but when he turns out to be a close friend of Gretchen’s, she finds that she cannot refuse him. Forced to spend several hours in close proximity while romance is in the air, Lear and RJ find themselves attracted to one another, but RJ’s personal demons and Lear’s past prevent them from acknowledging any mutual feelings beyond lust. RJ and Lear are instantly likable: Each has a lovely sense of humor, and their personal struggles ring true and demand empathy. RJ’s interactions with her friends and Lear’s with his family are entertaining and heartbreaking in equal measure. Although their unwillingness to lower their defenses is understandable, RJ and Lear go around in circles one time too many. But Williams has a talent for weaving moments of genuine warmth and tenderness with sizzling sexual chemistry in ways that are consistently engaging.

A sweet romance with appealing hints of heat and angst.