Zoey is bad luck. She is the bad luck bridesmaid. After ten years, three dresses and not one of the couples got married.
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When Zoey’s best friend asks her to be her bridesmaid she is nervous her bad luck will rub off. When Zoey turns down her boyfriend’s marriage proposal because she is nervous of her bad luck with weddings they are both heartbroken, but they need to put it behind them when they are both in attendance at Hannah’s wedding.
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This was a sweet book but fair warning this is not the rom com I was expecting. There is no traditional HEA, which I’m sure works for many, but I can’t help it I want the HEA in my books. I’m aware that it’s complicated but I can’t help who I am! With that being said I loved the journey of self discovery here.
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I thought the end of this was so interesting. She says, “My security blanket is the spark of the unknown. For many, it’s the comfort of forever. But I like maps without destinations.”
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Thank you @stmartinsPress for an advanced copy

This is a very cute, standard chick-lit book, and it was a nice, casual read, but I don't think it was anything remarkable. In particular, Zoey isn't the best character and I kind of want to shake her and tell her to grow up - I found her super selfish and a bit obnoxious. She also just cares about herself, so she isn't my favorite narrator/lead. Overall, this was a fine read.

Zoey Marks is convinced she’s bad luck. She’s been a bridesmaid three times and none of the brides have made it down the aisle. She’s also convinced marriage isn’t for her.

So when her best friend, Hannah, introduces her to Rylan, her cousin, everything Zoey thought goes out the window.

However, when Rylan and Zoey can’t agree on what their future looks like, Zoey is left heartbroken. As Zoey is just getting back into life, Hannah reveals she’s madly in love and getting married, and of course, Zoey is her bridesmaid.

Determined to get a bride down the aisle, Zoey throws herself into the role despite knowing Rylan will be at the wedding as well.

This book is filled with casual Jewish rep, great female friendships, and a wonderful message about love. While it might look like a rom-com, this book doesn’t really fit that mold.

I really enjoyed the plot, and while, I found Zoey to be unlikable at times, I, overall, really liked her character.

The writing is fast-paced and the characters are really enjoyable. I loved Hannah!

If you’re looking for a book that’s light, but talks about important subjects (society’s expectations of women, sexism, marriage, love) this is a book for you!

Zoey has always been a little different from the rest. She's never wanted to be in love and definitely didn't want to get married. After she is a bridesmaid in three weddings that never happen, she thinks she is bad luck for her own life and her best friend's wedding.

This was a romance and female empowerment all wrapped up into one. While the ending was realistic, I personally did not enjoy it - but that's just my opinion! (I prefer HEA.) Otherwise, I really liked the characters and the book. If you like romance, you should definitely check it out!

I wanted to like this one, but it fell flat for me. The characters seemed like descriptions and didn’t pop off the page, and I just couldn’t get sucked into the story.

When your friends ask you to be in their weddings and they "run" are you a bad luck bridesmaid? Zoey seems to think so. Zoey is a great friend questioning her own love life, but always happy doing her own thing. Society calls for a woman to get married, settle down, and have children. This is not the life that Zoey wants or plans to live. When she got proposed to her entire life gets turned upside down.

This was quick and easy read with fun characters. Not a simple romcom love story as I had initially thought but a story about loving oneself and their truths. It wasn't the ending I was expecting!

A huge thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book. I am voluntarily leaving a review, all opinions are my own.

This was a cute, quick read. I didn’t love the MC, I couldn’t really connect with her right away and even throughout the story I just didn’t get her.

I liked that this book delved into some topics other rom-coms don’t, that was a pleasant surprise. All in all, a cute, easy read, I just had to push past the MC at times.

Bad Luck Bridesmaid by Alison Rose Greenberg is a funny, sexy, fast-paced romcom. Overall I enjoyed the book, and I’ll be looking for more from Greenberg after this fun debut.

For the most part I liked the main character Zoey, although she was kind of selfish, and there were times when her actions were confusing and a bit rude. At least twice in the book, she made her best friend's problems about herself, which really aggravated me. I wanted to yell at her to just listen and stop talking! 😆

Zoey's fears were valid and I liked the live-your-truth aspect of the book, but the way her hesitancy took over the story was a little too much and I think I wanted to see more growth from her character. At times the story got a little repetitive, but just when I felt over it, an exciting scene would save the day and I’d be flying through the chapters again.

The steam in the book was fantastic which definitely kept me interested in how the rest of the book would unfold! 😆 And there were a few chapters that absolutely had me in my feels and tearing up. I’ve seen some mixed reviews on the ending - for my part, I liked it and thought it was well-done.

This book will resonate with anyone who has felt pressured to change in a relationship and who wants to find a partner who accepts them just the way they are.

I really enjoyed the emotional roller coaster of this one. The protagonist learned how to love, learned what matters about love, and fought through heartache to understand herself all the better.

If your a fan of bad communication causing all of the problems, you might enjoy this one. Unfortunately it wasn’t really my cup of tea.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

DNF 1%

Unfortunately, the writing style didn't mesh well with me. I also didn't like the voice of the main character, who came across as very "I'm x, x, and x, and look at me!"

This book was such a great debut!! I loved Zoey so much!! There were times when this book made me so frustrated, and I changed my rating of this book several times in my head while reading it. But in the end, the storyline as a whole worked really well. I really appreciated this book and would definitely recommend for those who don’t like a typical romance story! This one had a bit of everything: love, steam, heartbreak, friendship, discovery, and laughter!! 4.25 stars from me!!

Despite me thinking this was a rom-com I was very pleasantly surprised at the depth of topics covered here.

I loved that our gal Zoey is a bad-ass boss bitch, who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to go for it! I loved the Jewish representation and her friendship with her bestie.

Despite being a self-made marketing genius and amazing best friend, Zoey Marks is an absolute disaster in the bridesmaid department. So far, she’s 0 for 3 in getting a bride down the aisle. It’s a curse that’s made her terrified of what her own romantic future holds. She turns down a proposal from her seemingly perfect boyfriend, only to be reunited with her ex at his cousin/her best friend’s wedding a few months later. If Zoey can successfully get her BFF down the aisle, could she change her own destiny?

On paper, Rylan is the perfect boyfriend, but ultimately, I just don’t feel like there was much of a future for them. Maybe I’m jaded from my own past failed relationships–I always had similar feelings about not wanting to settle down or get married, and I forced myself to settle into long-term commitments when my heart just wasn’t fully on board. (And going back for more after a breakup because I was afraid of being alone!) When I met my husband, it was the kind of insta-love that makes me cringe to read about in stories–IYKYK, right?! I’d vowed to be single and childless forever. (More than a dozen years and three kids later, I’m singing a different tune.) Having that perspective helps me spot red flags in storylines all too well now. It was abundantly clear that Zoey just wouldn’t get a HEA if she ended up with Rylan, so I don’t think I could fully root for them to be together. I really enjoyed Zoey's personal journey, and being able to grow in some areas, and resolve to remain authentic to herself in others.

While there are some heavy themes and plot points along this journey, there are also so many parts that made me laugh out loud! It almost gave me Sophie Kinsella-ish vibes in some areas. She’s an all time favorite author, so that’s a huge compliment to Greenberg’s writing style! Thanks so much to SMP Romance and NetGalley for a free digital review copy.

If you’re looking for something fun and spicy, Bad Luck Bridesmaid is for you!

Zoey Marks is cursed. She’s 0-3 when it comes to being a successful bridesmaid who successfully gets her bride down the aisle. She starts to think she’s cursed in love period. This brings her heartbreak and her own failed would be happily after. Which is bad, awful truthfully.

Then comes wedding number four. Her best friend’s wedding. This will take her to the beautiful castle and face to face with the one whom’s heart she broke. She will to whatever it takes to get bride number four down that aisle, even if it means warfare with a cute best man.

Along the way, is a journey to self discovery and personal growth for herself and those around her.

This is a cute and spicy rom-com, and a great read. I really enjoyed it and look forward to more of the author’s work in the future!

I would love to give my thanks to the publisher, Alison Rose Greenburg, and of course Netgalley for the chance to read and review this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book was much more than I expected! This was more than just a rom com, it was a journey of personal growth that was fantastic to witness. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Zoey grow as a person and learning the power of self-acceptance. Similar to Katy Birchall's writing, this book was more than just a love story. The love story was important, but there was so much more about the main character's journey other than falling in love. I'm a sucker for chick lit where the romance isn't the only storyline, and Bad Luck Bridesmaid surely delivered! I'll update with my full review & link when I post on IG, but I encourage all of my friends to read this one!

I had read a few reviews prior to requesting this one so I knew it was more chick lit than romcom. If I would have thought it was a romcom going in, I would have been bummed. I liked Zoey sometimes but did give her a fair amount of eye rolls. I think it was more her journey of finding herself. Overall, I enjoyed this book.

Bad Luck Bridesmaid is a smart, funny, slightly steamy, and very entertaining read! Zoey Marks is a woman who is determined to be independent in business, life and even love, which means she sometimes acts against her own best interests. She is a serial monogamist, ending things with potential partners, before anything gets too serious--but then she meets Rylan and her rules get pushed aside as she wonders if he could be the "one"? She also is a bad luck charm as a bridesmaid in the the weddings of three of her friends, none of whom make it down the aisle. Her best friend Hannah's (and Rylan's cousin) wedding is next--will the curse continue? I absolutely loved Zoey and getting to know all of her friends, special places in New York, her outlook on life. The book is very descriptive with placing music and food and fashion within the scenes, so it is easy to become immersed in the story. What I felt was lacking in the story, however, was a real sense of who she was with her family, WHY she was having so much angst about commitment, and WHAT did she really envision as an ideal relationship? Also, so much of the book is built on Rylan being the most absolute perfect boyfriend, it is hard to resolve what happens with their relationship. It would have been better for more depth as to reasons why or character flaws or unfortunate circumstances than pure indecision and hunches. Also I loved the ending of the book, but I just wish that some of those dots had been connected to help the reader understand HOW she got there so abruptly and so soon (what will a new relationship for her look like? Again, what is it that she is looking for?). I heard that this book is being made into a movie and that is AWESOME as that is one that I will absolutely watch, but I really hope the issues I mentioned are resolved in the movie because if they had been addressed in this book, this would have easily been a 5 star for me.

This one ended up not being for me. I was really intrigued by the idea of a bad luck bridesmaid who curses the brides whose weddings she's in and while I found the aspect of the story interesting, the rest of it didn't do a lot for me. The characters were a little blah for me. I liked Zoey but only at certain parts of the book. The rest I could have done without I also felt like the story was advertised as a rom-com but it did not deliver in that aspect. It was far more a journey of self discovery and I just wasn't really in the mood for that.

2.5 stars

I really wanted to love this book and thought for sure, based on the synopsis and other reviews by bookish friends, that I would yet it fell very, very flat for me. I almost DNF'd to be honest because there was nothing about Zooey, the MC, that I liked at all. She's got to be one of the most selfish protagonists I've read about. Seriously, I get that she's anti-marriage and all that, blah, blah, but it was so far-fetched for her to think just because she hated the idea of marriage that she was bad luck as a bridesmaid, especially to her friend who realized last minute that she didn't want to marry a man--kinda gross of the author to make calling off a wedding because the bride realizes she's a lesbian into something the bridesmaid tries to claim as *her own* fault. I was pretty done with the book at that point because who does that? It really didn't get any better from there, in my opinion.

Yet, I'm clearly in the minority here so be sure to check out all the other reviews of readers who loved BLB more than I did.

Thank you NetGalley and St.Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

-Review posted to Goodreads on 1/25/22