LOVE AT FIRST SET

A woman who inadvertently convinces her best friend’s sister to ditch her own wedding finds herself falling for the runaway bride.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Lizzie McCarthy's entire life revolves around the gym—it isn’t just where she grew up and learned responsibility at a young age, but a gym called The Fitness Place is also her current professional home. She’s never been able to score the promotion she thinks she deserves, though, and it seems that the Manderlays, who own the gym, are determined to keep her staffing the front desk for the foreseeable future. When their son, James, Lizzie’s best friend, begs her to be his date to his sister Cara’s wedding, Lizzie reluctantly says she’ll do it—primarily to get some face time with her employers, since she’s hoping to become the manager of their gym’s new branch. One too many cocktails later, Lizzie stumbles on a crying woman in the bathroom and gives her a drunken pep talk only to discover much too late that the stranger she’s just helped out is Cara—and that Lizzie has convinced her to ditch her wedding. Lizzie is determined to do everything she can to make sure her bosses don’t learn she had a role in this mess, but now she's getting pushed into entertaining Cara while the newly single woman is hanging around trying to figure out what to do with her life. As the weeks pass, Lizzie discovers that she has a pretty strong crush on Cara, but with a promotion on the line and secrets stacking up all around them, is there a way she can both fulfill her aspirations and get the girl? The book’s premise has so much potential, and the developing romance between Cara and Lizzie is the strongest component, but the toxic family relationships drag the book down, making the eventual resolution less effective.

A clever rom-com that loses some of its spark by the end.