God these people are awful

Everything about this book is my jam at first glance but then I started reading it and….lord almighty.

This book is basically Palm Springs meets Groundhog Day meets the Am I The Asshole? Subreddit and thus, for me, is basically unreadable. At first, it had a great premise, a couple wakes up on their wedding day and are forced to relive their terrible rehearsal over and over. What this is supposed to expose is how the couple need to work through things and deal with their issues (such as the way both of their families treat them/their significant other) but instead, it just spirals into our main couple being awful to one another over and over.

I could not get into this or bother to care. The premise is such a fun idea for a romance novel but the execution is just too gross for me to consider a romance. Spoiler alert: they cheat on each other and then we’re supposed to be okay with them getting back together and being cute and falling in love again. Bullshit. I hate books that romanticize cheating on partners and somehow getting over it without doing any counseling or therapy. It’s just stupid and the minute it happened I lost interest and investment in hoping for the best for Megan and Tom. This isn’t a romance, it’s a story of gross people continually being gross and the author wanting us to praise them for the bare minimum of respect toward each other by the end. It’s toxic and weird to try and pass as romance. Hard pass.

Title: The Rehearsals
Author:  Annette Christie
Format: Hardcover
Pages:  320
ISBN: 9780316592994

Three Descriptors:

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