written by Lília
Crashing a wedding without knowing either the groom or the bride? And after that, going for a fake relationship? What can possibly go wrong in this scenario? Maybe all of it?
While helping her cousin during a wedding, Solange learns the bride wants somebody other than the groom and, as the true-blue romantic she is, ends up crashing the wedding to save the groom from a life of misery. Dean, the groom, actually wants a wedding of convenience and sees himself in a difficult position. In order to become a partner at his law firm, he needs to have a “stable” relationship, and not getting married destroys his plans.
Dean convinces Solange to become his fake girlfriend for a couple of “dates” only. But of course, things get more complicated. Solange’s Brazilian family is coming to visit and she needs a fake boyfriend herself—not Dean, but her best friend and roommate. Or so she’s planning. But the best laid plans have a way of going awry…
It took me a bit of time to really get into this story, but once in, I could not put the book down. Solange is a very relatable character. Maybe because her family, like mine, is from Brazil and she was raised among Brazilian aunts and cousins, I could recognize her spunkiness. Her relationship with her family is very real, and it was fun to read phrases in good Portuguese.
Relating to Dean, though, was a bit of a struggle at first. He’s so set in his ways and had decided early in life to avoid love. But with every encounter between Solange and Dean, you see both softening to the other, accepting their mutual attraction and trying to avoid it at the same time. They both start thinking about their life goals and the paths they set for themselves.
This book is one of those comedies of errors in which you know a train is going to cause damage but you can’t avoid the wreckage. You want to see how the author will solve the situation and what the couple will look like once they’re together. Because they will end up together! It’s a romcom, after all.
The Wedding Crasher is a lovely read. Seeing well-adjusted Brazilian immigrants in the US, keeping their cultural values but adapting to their new surroundings, is great. I wonder if readers will miss translations for all the Portuguese phrases, but the really important ones are translated. This book certainly made me want to read more from Mia Sosa, starting with her previous book, The Worst Best Man, which tells the story of Solange’s cousin Lina.
