REVIEW: The Bad Bridesmaid by Rachael Johns

KaetrinB- Reviews / Book ReviewsAustralia / Contemporary / NetGalley / Norfolk Island1 Comments

The optimism people have about love and relationships never ceases to surprise me. It’s like an aspiring tennis player losing game after game at amateur level, yet still believing they can win Wimbledon.

Some months have passed since the events of The Other Bridget and Bea and Sully are happily living together with their dog, John Brown. After Fred’s out-there first novel was kindly and lovingly critiqued for the trash-fire it was by Bea, Fred has struggled to find more inspiration for fiction. She ended up writing an article “21 Rules for Not Catching Feelings” and out of that came a book deal. But she’s stuck in the early stages of writing and her deadline is looming.

Then, Fred’s mum contacts her to tell her she (Fred’s mum, Tracy) is getting married. Again. This will be husband number 6. Fred has gone through all of the other breakups with her mum and the most recent one nearly broke both of them. She’s naturally suspicious about Paul, an ex from high school who Tracy connected with at their 40-year reunion only a matter of weeks ago. When she finds out that Paul’s first wife died only six months earlier, she’s even more concerned.

Fred’s brother, Waylen, convinces her to go to the wedding celebrations to support their mother – plus, it’s a week-long all expenses paid holiday on historic Norfolk Island in the Pacific. Bea points out that at the very least, she will have opportunity to write more of her book while she’s away. So Fred agrees to attend the wedding and be Tracy’s bridesmaid – but only if she can wear a short red dress.

At the airport in Brisbane (Fred is from Western Australia but Norfolk Island is off the east coast of Australia so she has to fly to Brisbane in Queensland first) she spies a very hot dude and is surprised and mildly disappointed to find out they are soon to be step siblings if the wedding goes ahead. Paul has three children – Juliet, Scarlett and Leo (short for Leopold).

Fred has recently participated in “World’s Greatest Shave” to raise money for cancer research and is rocking the bald/nearly bald look. Fred is tall and thin and model-hot so she has no trouble finding dates.  It’s not surprising therefore that Leo gives her the eye at the airport and afterwards. But finding out that they’re going to be related does dampen their enthusiasm for any kind of fling. 

It becomes clear early on that both Leo and Fred have concerns about their parents marrying and they decide to team up and hatch plans to show Tracy and Paul they should not get married, at least, not yet.

Among Fred’s “rules” is

13. Limit your time together.

14. No text and in-depth conversation. No daily chats.

and

17. Never see the same person more than once a week.

Of course, she and Leo aren’t dating so the rules don’t apply. Except, their attraction builds and those rules turn out to be very important for not catching feelings. Because feelings are caught. Leo is a believer in love and “the one” – Fred, not so much.

‘Don’t you ever yearn for anything deeper?’ he asks. ‘Humans aren’t animals – we all need connection and friendship, emotional intimacy as well as physical.’

‘Who says we have to get all that from the same person?’ I counter. ‘I have good friends – I’m emotionally intimate with them.’

I don’t want to spoil the rest of the plot so I won’t go into much detail about what happens after Leo and Fred start spending time together and what happens with their plans to stop the wedding. That’s something readers will need to find out for themselves.

Norfolk Island and the various characters who live there are lovingly portrayed, with interesting history and some of the quirks of this singular location included. I enjoyed Scarlett and River and their children, was pleasantly surprised by Juliet and I liked Waylen and his boyfriend, Benji too. Tracy and Paul were also far more than what one might expect from the premise. I already loved Fred and I quickly loved Leo too (which one small exception which I’ll mention later).

The Bad Bridesmaid does follow along from The Other Bridget but it is quite a different book. The Other Bridget had a strong “women’s fiction” element to it as well as the romance between Bea and Sully. It was a long book at nearly 500 pages. The Bad Bridesmaid is much more a straight up contemporary romance and is a shorter read by a couple hundred pages. None of those things are bad but it’s worth mentioning that the reading experience is very different. There is the same humour and charm however and more than a cameo from Bea which I also appreciated very much.

Fred and Leo have a week in Norfolk Island to fall in love and of course, for this to work, readers have to believe Fred will change her deeply and long-held beliefs about relationships. That’s the sticking point for me on this one. I did believe Fred and Leo fell in love. I had no difficulty in believing their attraction and chemistry and in accepting they’d be very good together. But it does come at the expense of an entirely valid philosophy and I was a little disappointed that philosophy was presented as being ultimately wrong rather than just … not right anymore (for example). There were a couple of things Leo said that I felt were throwing too much shade on how Fred had lived her life (borderline or not-so-borderline judgemental in fact) and when Fred accepted the truth of those things I was disappointed. I wanted them together yes and believed they should be – I am a romance reader and romance lover after all and that’s what I was there for, but the author did such a great job of setting Fred up as this amazing, bold and independent woman I couldn’t help feeling something was a little diminished by her leaving that life to be with Leo. Not Fred herself. But… something. Did Fred give up a little too much? Perhaps I needed to see a little more of what she gained to be truly satisfied with the exchange. Perhaps it’s that the HEA-Fred seemed a little too different from No-Catching-Feelings-Fred. Were they the same person? I didn’t quite make the leap I think I was supposed to. Nearly, but not quite.  Ultimately, for me, I guess it boils down to that The Bad Bridesmaid mostly but didn’t quite, stick the landing even though, overall it was a very enjoyable read.

Grade: B-

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