The Trouble with Runaway Brides by Piper Rayne Series: Lake Starlight #3
Published by Self Published
Publication Date: August 8, 2023
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 264
Source: Review Tour
Format: eARC
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Disclaimer: I voluntarily reviewed a copy of this book. All opinions stated are solely mine.
I should not still be hung up on my high school girlfriend.
I’m a billionaire, with a penthouse in New York City, a private plane, and was recently crowned one of Manhattan’s most eligible bachelors.
She’s engaged to my rival. A real prick of a guy whose family is about as famous as mine. So, pictures of the happy couple are plastered everywhere, and it’s driving me insane.
The last time I spoke to her was my freshman year of college, and I never imagined I’d bump into her at a crowded restaurant in the busiest city in the world. But fate had other plans, and when I innocently suggest that the press wouldn’t bother with her wedding plans if she held it in our small Alaskan town where we grew up, I had no idea she’d take me seriously.
Now, I find myself helping her plan the wedding at my dad’s luxury resort while the town’s gossip app follows our every move, afraid that their golden boy will get his heart broken twice by the same girl.
But that’s impossible because she stole my heart when we were fifteen, and never gave it back.
Review
Lance and Kenzie were high school sweethearts who broke up before college (instigated by Lance) and have kept away from each other since their break-up. Only now, Kenzie is engaged to Lance’s archnemesis and wants to enact her dream wedding (even though not with her dream groom) and Lance finds himself roped in as wedding planner.
What could go wrong? Except that they both have unresolved feelings and Kenzie will be returning to have her wedding in the place she loved but turned her back on when she went to college, to face a town that considers her persona non grata for hurting their golden boy. This is a recipe for turbulence, which is exactly what happens.
But my favorite things about this story?
Lance – he is a very successful man, a highly eligible bachelor with all the trappings of wealth and a different woman on his arm every day, but he does not come across as a douchebag. Was he sometimes mean to Kenzie? Yes. Because they had buried all their feelings and never dealt with them, every little interaction between them was fraught with tension, anger, want and other emotions.
Kenzie – she gave up the place she loved because of her broken heart and was going to settle for a less than ideal marriage but returning to Lake Starlight awakened parts of her that she had buried and the friendships she had turned her back on. Initially, she was unlikable, but as the story went on, she became a lot more relatable and had me rotting for her and Lance.
The beginning of this book was hard to get through because I wanted to shake both Lance and Kenzie for the poor decisions they were making, but I stuck it out and it was worth it in the end. I also love that the story did not completely focus on Lance and Kenzie’s relationship, but also on how their relationship affected their friendships, especially Kenzie.
This story is worth reading as the authors take us through the hurt of Lance and Kenzie’s break-up and how finding their way back to each other was a gut twisting process of wading through the pain to find the beauty and love under all of that.
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