I received this book for free from the publisher as a free story in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Source: the publisher as a free story
"The Reception"
by
J.R. Ward
It is part of the , series and is a contemporary romance in a Kindle edition that was published by Gallery Books on August 7, 2018 and has 39 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Dark Lover, Lover Eternal, Lover Awakened, Covet, Crave, Lover Revealed, Lover Unbound, Lover Enshrined, Lover Avenged, Lover Mine, Lover Unleashed, Envy, An Irresistible Bachelor, Leaping Hearts, His Comfort and Joy, Lover Reborn, Rapture, Lover at Last, Possession, The King, The Shadows, The Bourbon Kings, Blood Kiss, The Beast, Blood Vow, The Chosen, Blood Fury, “Dearest Ivie”, The Thief, "The Rehearsal Dinner", Consumed, The Savior, Blood Truth, Where Winter Finds You, The Sinner, A Warm Heart in Winter, Claimed, The Wolf
The second part of The Wedding From Hell serialization (and prequel to Consumed, the first story in Ward’s Firefighters series based in New Brunswick, Massachusetts, and revolving around Anne Ashburn, a woman who has wanted to put on the turnouts from the time when most little girls dream of weddings and veils.
This eBook, part two of “The Wedding From Hell” was available for free from Gallery Books for an honest review. And yes, I also read the third part of “The Wedding From Hell”. All it is, is an excerpt from Consumed. I suggest you wait until Consumed is out on October 2nd, ’cause that excerpt is really nasty…ugh…
My Take
Ooh, Ward definitely caught my attention with that diatribe against Anne’s conformist mother! It’s making me itch to find out why Anne has no respect for her “hero” father and full of questions as to what makes her mother such a pushover. As for all the snapping and snarling coming from Deandra… How does Moose not see this?!
And Danny only has eyes for Anne, who so desperately does NOT want this. She’s got such a mash-up of issues from her childhood and the crap her parents pulled, that she’s willing to destroy her own happiness to avoid it. How do I know all this? Easy, when Ward uses third person dual protagonist point-of-view from both Danny’s and Anne’s individual perspectives, so we hear all their fears and hopes.
Yeah, Anne ticks me off in this…and yet…and yet she does make an excellent point about the hypocrisy in our society.
And it gets so much worse than we expect when Deandra goes haywire. It’s certainly a crisis and one that Danny is unsure how to handle. Quite unlike his total willingness to transfer out of “the best of the best” firehouses in New Brunswick.
It’s immaturity and desperation at its worst with a horrible wedding reception with “white boys” who can’t dance and the aged aunts.
The Story
First that speech that had Anne bolting from the rehearsal dinner. Then the horror of the aged aunts at the reception that led Anne to such desperate measures…a dance. Surely a dance couldn’t hurt?
It was a simple desire for escape that led to an urge of desire and need.
The Characters
Anne Ashburn is a firefighter with the 499 firehouse and a groomsman for a crew mate. She has no respect for her father, Thomas Sr, and she’s estranged from her older brother, Thomas Ashburn, Jr, the New Brunswick fire chief.
Firehouse 499 is…
…where Anne is part of a crew that includes the groom, Robert “Moose” Miller, and his other groomsmen, including Duff, Emilio, Deshaun, and Dannyboy Maguire, “the king of the one-night stand”. His twin, John Thomas, died on the job three years ago.
Jack and Mick are with SWAT and are Danny’s and Moose’s roommates.
Deandra Cox is Moose’s fiancée.
Aunt Melinda couldn’t be there due to her knee problems. Mary Ellen is another aunt, seventy-eight, with a Prancercise obsession and a love of sequins. Pantsuit aunt has fried vocal cords who’s sure that the pants-clad Anne is gay.
The Cover and Title
The cover is fuzzy with a shallow depth of field creating a dark background that finds us looking up at Danny in full fireman’s rig, a thoughtful look on his sooty face. A round yellow badge in the upper left ensures we know it’s a prequel to Consumed. The series information is large and in white at Danny’s chin. The serialization title is in a small yellow font while the author’s name is huge in yellow at the bottom.
The title refers to the events at “The Reception” after the wedding.
