4ish stars

This was a fun, dramatic rom-com. Although I had mixed feelings about many of the decisions the characters made, I also understood some of them and appreciated most of what the writers were trying to do. I enjoyed this book (as well as their last co-creation) and will most likely check out whatever they create together next.

As the middle daughter to wealthy successful Dallas socialites, Claire Sommers has always had to compete for her parents' affections and approbation. Her elder sister Evelyn was always the best at everything she did and now runs three thriving businesses, oh and she and her husband are expecting their first child. Her younger sister Lucille is a lawyer, universally adored, and engaged to a guy the family all loves. A few years ago, in an attempt to please her parents and get ahead in the wedding planning company she was working for at the time, Claire did something underhand that not only cost her her job, but also any sniff of her Trust Fund before the age of forty.

Unable to bear the gossip and her family's disappointment, Claire has moved to Nashville where she works on a bridal magazine called Piece of Cake. Having worked her way up, Claire is now a journalist on the magazine but the print world is in decline and the magazine is facing a digital-only future unless it can find new revenue streams or increase subscriptions. The editor has decided to run with one of Claire's ideas, to create a docuseries featuring some of the most lavish weddings, but has brought in a social media content creator from New York called Dominic Gravino who has a hugely successful socials account called The Brides' Man to produce the series.

Whilst initially hostile, Claire and Dom soon develop a good working relationship, even if it is often bonding over the ridiculous extravagance of some of the weddings, and it could be more ... but Dom is only in Nashville as a consultant for a few months to see whether the docuseries could generate enough interest to keep Piece of Cake afloat.

I liked this but I didn't love it. Reading the blurb at the end the writers are an events planner and a journalist and I think it shows, there's a lot about the different events, the décor, the flowers, the seating arrangements etc and the burgeoning romance between Dom and Claire gets lost in the detail. Also Claire's heinous crime is hinted at for so long that when it is finally revealed it feels like a bit of an anti-climax (or maybe it is a big deal in the wedding planning world but not so much for me).

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

This delightful rom/com is a fun easy read, a Piece of Cake! Wedding cake that is. Wedding planner Claire Sommers (yes, that famous Dallas Sommers family) flees town in disgrace for Nashville after an epic fail on the job. She has reinvented herself as a writer on the slowly failing magazine Piece of Cake, writing clichéd stories on a small budget. In a last ditch effort to save the magazine, she pitches an idea for a reality wedding series. Enter Dominic Gravino, a Brooklyn native and an instastar as The Brides Man. Now an unhappy Claire will have to partner with Dom. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he is drop dead gorgeous, talented and a perfect foil for Claires’s Southern manners and reticence. Here we go!

I don’t want to ruin the fun with spoilers but Mary Hollis Huddleston and Asher Fogle Paul know their stuff! Their descriptions of the over the top weddings are laugh out loud funny. The dead birds! The confetti gun! And don’t get me started on the hot chicken date…I’m still laughing! Schedule an evening, a day at the beach or a rainy weekend to read because you won’t want to put Piece of Cake down. It’s delicious! 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Harper Muse and Mary Hollis Huddleston; Asher Fogle Paul for this ARC.

Clare isn't thrilled when Dom shows up to help rescue Piece of Cake, the wedding magazine where she's working. He's an influencer who specializes in weddings (like that a man is doing this) and she finds him a bit much. But then, they start to bond over the reality show and with one another. Fans of the genre know there will be an HEA for these two if not for all the brides and grooms of Nashville. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. It's a light read that's perfect for the beach.

This book is perfect for your summer reading if you're interested in southern fiction with a wedding setting and enemies to lovers romance!

Claire begins working with Dom, a wedding blogger, to save the wedding magazine Piece of Cake. They are working together going to weddings to work on the magazine's social media. Claire doesn't understand why Dom would be a wedding blogger so she is skeptical of him at first which made for an entertaining romance to read. It felt different from other romances I've read in the past.

Claire really packs a punch in the beginning but by the end her heart softens and she comes to terms with mistakes she made at her last job and begins to face it and deal with it. This book had great character development with Claire and I loved seeing her open up and deal with her past and forgive herself. By the end I liked Claire even more than I did in the beginning.

The wedding and family drama and dynamic was also entertaining. Claire came from a rich family, so to see how that impacted her just made me understand her more.

The whole book felt like I was watching a romantic comedy from the 90's or early 2000's and I loved that about it. It had such a raw and real romance, personality, and comedy. The wedding setting, taking place in the south, gave that rich southern feel to it. The romance was also clean and ended leaving you cheering!

I loved every part of this book, I could have finished it in two sittings. I would definitely recommend this as a summer read and it is probably going to be one of my favorite books!

Be sure to pick this one up June 20th!

Thank you Netgalley and Harper Muse for this ARC so I could review it!

Dominic and Claire are in the wedding business -- and are doing their best to make sure the magazine Claire works for is saved. This is a sweet, light romance with all things wedding related. There's humor and healing and a touch of romance. If you're looking for a light summer read, this is it.

Journalist Claire and bridal influencer Dominic are reluctantly paired up to host reality show–style docuseries focused on a series of Southern weddings, each one more extra than the last, in the hopes of saving the wedding magazine Claire works for. Over the top productions, bridezillas, and crazy bachelorette parties force them into proximity.

I like opposites attract stories and this was East Coast slick meets Southern charm. The twist of a dude being a wedding influencer was funny, then charming, but underneath it… was a woman with a good idea who didn’t get to do it based on her own merit; a man needed to be brought in to help. The money spent on just one day in a couple’s life is unfathomable to anyone making minimum wage, but readers who read for escape will enjoy the over-the-top details and bad behavior.

I liked this better than Without a Hitch and I appreciate the insider sense similar to Devil Wears Prada and The Nanny Diaries; it’s possible I dislike the wedding industry too much to enjoy these novels.

I received a free, advance reader’s review copy of #PieceOfCake from #NetGalley.

A cute, enjoyable and entertaining story that made me laugh and kep me reading.
Full of humour and well plotted.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

I was not able to go finish this. The cover was cute and I enjoy the premise but it did not work for me.

I requested this book as a native of Nashville, I enjoyed the Nashville setting. But, I felt the execution of this story was really slow. Claire is working in a Nashville bridal magazine publishing and Dom comes in to her company to work on a collaboration with her to grow the magazine brand.

It’s a nice escape with lots of bridal stories. The romantic relationship grows very slowly. And Claire has a lot going on with her family. Lots of drama.

Oh this was not for me at all. I'd requested this book in hopes of reading about a fun wedding reality show with cute characters and a great ensemble cast. Honestly, very 27 Dresses in my head, but it was absolutely none of that. The main characters felt too caricaturish to me and I couldn't root for them which is why I ended up DNF-ing it.

I really enjoyed this comeback story featuring Claire Sommers, a Southern woman from a well-to-do Texas family who made a career-ending mistake at her former job as a wedding planner and is trying to start over now working at Piece of Cake, a wedding magazine.

When she's tasked with working with Dom, a NYC content creator to film a number of high-profile weddings (including her sisters) as a way to help save the magazine, she finds herself forced to confront her past, reconcile with her family and realizing Dom isn't as bad as she first thought.

Fun and heartfelt and great on audio narrated by one of my favs, Brittney Pressley. I enjoyed the cameos from the authors' last book, Without a hitch and look forward to more from this writing duo. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for early digital and audio copies in exchange for my honest review!

First of all, I am OBSESSED with this cover. It's absolutely stunning. This book is coded with southern charm and elaborate weddings. It was so much fun, and I fell in love with these characters almost immediately.

#PieceofCake #NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an E-Arc copy of this novel. A fun novel that will make you laugh.

I DNF'd this at 80%. I am honestly so upset.

The whole reason I joined NetGalley was to do my part in combating review-bombing before books release, and I saw Piece of Cake had low ratings, but I couldn't find any real solid reasons for why the ratings were so low. Other reviewers mentioned it was too slow of a slow-burn, or the editing was lackluster, how the main characters were underdeveloped or didn't have enough chemistry, but these are all really subjective feelings so I thought, maybe, this book just hadn't made it to its target audience. I'm coming in hot off of reading a couple rom-com's, so I'm definitely in the right frame of mind for a cute lil slow burn, especially one where the female main character and I share a hometown. Dallas represent!

There were, admittedly, a few times I wanted to throw in the towel. First of all, the formatting on Kindle is awful. Sometimes, the
sentences have strange breaks in them and will have
only two
words on a line, before the sentence continues in full to the
next line.
There's images, watermarks I guess, in the middle of roughly every 2 or 3 pages, which makes highlighting and annotating awkward. The ebook file isn't broken up into chapters, there's just INTRODUCTION and that's the whole book. But the worst part, formatting-wise, was when an entire sentence was broken up and displayed out of order.
"He pinged again: Need anything? How can I help? poisoning. Catfished by the catfish, you know how it goes.

No, it's ok. I'm fine. Just threw up and should feel better. Seems to be just a case of good ol' food "
... Sorry, what?

But I thought to myself, maybe this is just a not-yet-formatted copy. It's an advanced review copy, after all. Perfectly ok if some things aren't perfect! So I continued on.

I felt our female main character, Claire, was a little too hostile to our male main character, Dom, at the beginning. He didn't ask to be brought in and "steal her thunder" or whatever, and I'm very against misdirected anger. But, I figured this was just how the author(s) were choosing to write a reverse grumpy/sunshine trope, so I decided to grin and bear it. Other tropes started kicking in, obviously rivals-to-lovers, workplace romance, forced proximity, and later on, fake dating. The fake dating was my favorite, really, because Claire and Dom toured a new wedding venue posing as an engaged couple and connected with other engaged couples, including the middle-aged pair of lovebirds Pam and Bob. Truthfully, I want Pam and Bob's story. Bob cheerfully shares a nugget of wisdom to the faux soon-to-be-newlyweds: "Remember, marriage is about one person being right, and one person needing more whisky!" Pam playfully punches Bob's arm, he squeezes her rear, and it's a playful and cute moment. It's, like, a single paragraph, maybe two, but I loved them instantly. When I stopped reading, though, Claire and Dom didn't hope to have half as much chemistry as Pam and Bob.

It wasn't long after this, though, that I started noticing a pattern with Claire. Honestly, I should have seen it sooner. At every wedding (so far) Claire covers as a journalist, she has to pull on her experience from her days as a wedding planner and save the day. Bride tore her train? Not to worry, Claire is a safety-pin magician. Bride wants to walk down the aisle with her late father's pocket watch tucked into her bouquet, and the pocket watch is suddenly missing? Have no fear, the drunk mother-of-the-bride brought Dear Ol' Dad's ashes in a ziplock, and we can put them into a locket so she can still have Daddy next to her in spirit on her big day. But wait! What if the parakeets that are serving as decor die because the reception hall is too cold? Easy peasy, we dispose of them and place small flower arrangements in the birdcages instead. Claire is a disgraced ex-wedding planner, but that's ok, she'll still save the day every... single... time. And each time, the actual wedding planner (or assistant wedding planner) is standing there, mouth agape, useless as can be.

I debated whether I should mention the money issues in this review, but I decided to go ahead, because I'm already here and already upset. The author(s) make(s) it a point, several times, to drive home the fact Claire is 1) cut off from her trust fund, 2) her family is disgustingly rich and 3) Sommers girls Must Be Successful with a Capital S but Claire is the Black Sheep with a capital BS. But if Claire's so broke, why does she have a $80 Le Labo candle? Yes, I googled the retail price. Why does Claire also have Madewell sweatpants ($75)? And why, on God's green earth, does she drive a Range Rover? And when her Range Rover starts having troubles and the check engine light turns on, Claire is concerned that she can't afford a costly repair because her bank account "barely" has four digits in it. Honey, please. If there are four digits in the bank account, you are fine by most standards. But maybe you should be driving a Toyota Camry, and not a Range Rover. Live within your means, girl.

All of this, though, was something I could power through, until I got to 77% and we started making fun of people who enjoy the fantasy genre. I'm serious. Claire and Dom rudely giggle through a wedding ceremony where the couple exchanges vows in the Lord of the Rings elvish language of Sindarin. The characters make this out to be some kind of bizarre, freakish spectacle, and a few paragraphs later Dom even makes awful jabs about the groom wanting to reincarnate as "a minotaur, a vampire, or an elf in his next life?" to which Claire responds with how she "legit [doesn't] want to know." and "This fantasy is walking a very fine line as it is, and any role-playing they're both into is not something I need to know about."

This, combined with making fun of the Twilight wedding recreation and the reception area looking like Fern Gully, feels absolutely cruel. This is honestly just plain mean-spirited. Since one of the authors, Mary Hollis Huddleston, is a wedding/event planner and former journalist (see question 2 here: https://blog.debbiemacomber.com/asher-fogle-paul/) I can't help but wonder if these thoughts and opinions are actually her own, and not a fictional characters. Is Claire a self-insert for Huddleston? I don't know, but I didn't want to continue reading to find out. I gave it a few more pages after the fantasy wedding roast, but ultimately couldn't continue enjoying the book, since I am one of the freaks who enjoys going "to all those conferences for people who like fantasy stuff." Clearly, I am not the target audience for this book.

Yet, despite all this, I still gave this book 2 stars. It's not horrible, but it's clearly not for me, or any fan of fantasy, either. This book is for a very niche audience, and that's ok. Not everything is for everyone. Hopefully when the book does release (target publish date June 20, 2023) the Kindle formatting will be fixed and this book will fall into all the right hands, and none of the wrong hands. I hope Claire and Dom get their HAE, and I suspect they do.

DNF Read 30% of the book.

I'm gonna be honest, I judged the book by it's cover. The cover was cute and the premise summary sounded right up my alley. However, I couldn't really get into it after reading 100 or so pages. That's not to say others should not read this book. It just wasn't for me.

This is a difficult book to review because there wasn’t anything especially bad about it, we just didn’t click. I would read a few pages and then grab my phone to start scrolling because it wasn’t holding my interest. The characters just never seemed real and their connection was nonexistent. The ending came out of nowhere, too easily. It just wasn’t for me.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Piece of Cake is one delicious piece of writing. It is entertaining and inspiring and despite the fact that it never mentions that Carrie is the often referred to as middle child of the family who feels neglected and less-loved by parents and siblings. Many hilarious and also heartwarming scenes make the book adorable to read.

Something about the “I’m a spoiled rich kid who lost my money and now has to learn how to be humble, empathetic, and human” trope entertains me like nothing else! Claire and Don’s relationship was fascinating to follow. I loved seeing their goofiness, bickering, and swoony moments!

A great "antagonists to lovers" story with lots of appeal for readers who enjoy books by Emily Henry, Elin Hilderbrand, Susan Mallery, and Olivia Dade. The setting is Nashville, where Claire works at an old-school bridal magazine called Piece of Cake. The magazine is in financial trouble, the the boss decides that to save it, they will hire a hot social media influencer, Dom, who will be working with Claire on a project that if done correctly, could save the magazine from going under. Claire isn't happy about this setup, but she has no choice -- which is a good thing for readers, because it sets a great story in motion. I look forward to recommending this book.