Always the Bridesmaid - Lindsey Kelk

This is a book that was on my radar for a while because I kept seeing it on the DC library's Overdrive page.  There was always a waitlist and it wasn't something I wanted to use a hold on, so I just waited until it eventually came up as available.  It looked like it was going to be a romance, something along the lines of 27 Dresses--so, light and fluffy but still enjoyable for what it is.

Upon reading, it's actually chick lit.

Oh, chick lit.  It seems like a derogatory title for a category of books, but ultimately, it fits them.  They're basically entirely fluff.  There might be romance and friendships, but none of the emotional connections ever seem to ring true.  It's mostly women who are at a low point in their careers bumbling around and wondering why everyone is doing so much better than they are, wondering why they can't get a man, and so on and so forth.  Don't get me wrong; this can be fun.  They're typically reads that only take a few hours and watching some other person bumble through life can honestly make you feel a little better about yourself.  They are good reads for the pool or the beach with some yummy snacks.  For some reason, the ones that I've encountered also seem to predominantly take place in Britain, which means that there's British slang and they spend a lot of time drinking tea and everyone just seems charming.

Unfortunately, this one really didn't hit the spot.  Mainly because Maddie is an idiot.  (This is, unfortunately, another feature of chick lit books, but it seemed particularly egregious here.)  She meets a guy at a wedding she's working, takes him home for a one-night stand, and then continues to pursue him even when it is gratingly, blindingly clear that he is only interested in her for sex and she is not his girlfriend, as she has deluded herself into believing.  Also, girl appears to be wearing mismatched shoes on the cover, so perhaps her mind-boggling obviousness shouldn't come as that much of a surprise.  She lets literally every single person in her life walk all over her, so she's without much of a spine as well.  Her friends are not friends at all, but rather people who take advantage of her again and again--though she takes advantage of them as well, so maybe all's fair play on that matter.  Either way, it seems like it's not really a group of "friends."  Her family is universally horrible as well.

There's a small actual romance element in this book (other than the hooking up) but it didn't ring true in the slightest.  Maddie talks to him for about fifteen minutes total on a couple of separate occasions and suddenly he's willing to drive miles and miles to pick her up, declares he loves her, etc.  This does not say "romance" so much as it says "unhealthy fixation."

Overall, this was a book of self-centered and selfish people who I wanted to push in front of a double-decker bus for much of the book.  Maddie has a few cute moments, there are a few moments of connection, but they couldn't redeem the slap-worthy behavior taking up most of the pages.

2 stars out of 5.