Ada is trying to get to her sister's wedding in Ireland but the universe is doing everything possible to stop that from happening. When she gets stranded in London, she bumps into Jack who is also headed to the wedding and is the playboy best man Ada has been warned about.

A roadtrip through the UK is one of my favorite things to do and it was fun following Ada & Jack on their journey (both logistically and emotionally). I do wish the setting had been more of a character, I feel like Edinburgh is the only place you get a real feel for. The romantic feelings developed a little too quickly for my liking and the sister subplot needed to be a little more fleshed out, but it was still a fun journey to get to the wedding on time.

Thanks to Berkley and Netgalley for the ARC.

A huge thank you to @berkleyromance for the free book! #BerkleyPartner #Berkley

In Wedding Dashers, Ada and Jack, the maid of honor and best man, take a hilariously chaotic journey to a destination wedding in Belfast. Buckle up, because this ride is filled with travel mishaps that will have you laughing out loud!

From witty (and sometimes swoony) banter to laugh-out-loud travel disasters, this book has it all! The chemistry between Ada and Jack is palpable, and their heartfelt moments make you root for them even more.

I’m not a fan of third act break ups. But this one is done so well and realistically. My heart ached for them. And oh boy, that ending and epilogue? Perfection!

If you’re a fan of road trip romances, this debut is an absolute must read! Get ready for a journey filled with love, laughter, and just the right amount of chaos!

Wedding Dashers
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to Berkley romance for the free book and prhaudio for the gifted ALC! I read and listened to this one at the same time after learning it’s called immersive reading! It was such an adventure to read the book and listen to the audio at the same time!

This was a fun road trip book where our FMC Ada ends up be stranded in London on the way to her sisters over-the-top castle wedding in Ireland to a man she’s known for less than a year. After a stream of bad luck, she ends up bumping into a guy named Jack at the hotel she’s suppose to stay at before trying to catch another flight the next day, only to learn he is the infamous best man in her sisters wedding! These two decide to travel together to get to her sisters wedding and along the way experience endless obstacles while learning more about one another.

For a debut this was amazing! I did think in the FMC Ada was a bit delusional in wanting to get back together with her long term ex-boyfriend of 8 years who asked for a break once her business went under. I was so happy to see her character arc unfold where she finally stood up and did something for herself. I loved getting to know Jack over time and seeing how his facade of this playboy was really just a coverup for someone who was going through a painful event in life.

I think for me the book took off and really made me love it once Jack and Ada finally got to the wedding venue and they took their days of tension and friendship and morphed it into something real and full of passion. The last half of the book hooked me as both Jack and Ada were real adults who saw that they both needed time to be apart and heal from their respective issues before something real could ever happen between us. I wish more romances did this!!!

I love the humor and the puns. I love traveling on several forms of transportation throughout the UK and I love the realistic ending!

3.5 stars, rounded up

I went back and forth about whether to round up or round down, but I decided to go up because the resolution of the story is heartfelt and unexpected.

Main plot of the story is one we have read and seen on the screen a million times. Ada is on her way to her sister's wedding in Ireland. Her flight out of London is cancelled and she meets Jack, who is in the same predicament. After saying some disparaging things about the best man in the wedding, Ada discovers that Jack is said best man. The two travel together to the wedding, and there's a lot of sexual tension between the two of them. However they both have a lot of emotional baggage and the timing just might be off for them to give in to the attraction.

I thought the first half of the book was slow and predictable. I feared it was going to go in the regular romcom/Hallmark direction but I was happily incorrect. Are there some steamy sex scenes? Yes, this is not a closed door book. But in the end the emotional exploration was quite realistic and the entire book felt like something that could actually have happened, madcap cross-country trek notwithstanding.

I didn't particularly warm to Ada's character until quite a bit into the book. She seemed very immature and stuck, but when she finally comes to some realizations about herself, she showed a great deal of growth and maturity.

Overall, I enjoyed this surprising romance novel. If you can get through the long setup, the payoff is very sweet and meaningful.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ (4.25/5)

Plane, trains and automobiles with a romantic twist. Two strangers, Ada and Jack, meet on their way to a destination wedding when their travel plans go awry. Both are carrying baggage, figuratively and literally. While some of their plans are quite unorthodox and a little bit of a stretch, the outcome is worth the read.

This was such a FUN read and a great debut novel. The storyline kept me turning the pages. The characters were realistically flawed and their banter amusing. The settings were romantically perfect. I appreciated the twist ending that I didn’t expect and found very satisfying. I look forward to reading this author again.

Thanks to Berkley Romance and NetGalley for this ARC. This is my honest opinion.

Short synopsis: Desperate to make it to her sisters wedding in Belfast (with the veil intact) Ada’s flight gets cancelled. Her and the stranger (who happens to be the best man) travel together to make it in time.

My thoughts: This is a debut?! I absolutely adored the wit, the banter, and the fun of this one. There were also some serious undertones, but I loved how the author handled them, and the characters grew through them!

Jack and Ada were so great together. They were messy, but their communication was excellent. I loved the situations they found themselves in, especially the hostel with the “special quilt.”

If you love a good “road trip” wedding romance you’ll be sure to love this! The audio is narrated by the amazing Brittany Presley and she did such a great job! I loved how she told the story!

Read if you love:
* Destination Weddings
* Banter for days
* Maid of Honor/Best Man
* Forced proximity and only one bed
* Pineapple on your pizza

Ada is a bit of a mess. Her boyfriend of 8 years told her he want a break, her tattoo shop has been closed down by the bank, she’s back living with the parents, and her connecting flight to her little sister’s Scotland destination wedding has been cancelled. What else could go wrong? Ada’s bad luck continues with the hotel voucher that the airline gave her is useless but, a stunningly gorgeous stranger offers to buy her a drink, then dinner, then to share his room. However, when Ada says yes, she thinks he’s just offering a place to sleep. He thinks she’s agree to a hookup and they are both quite surprised when the miscommunication becomes apparent and Ada realizes that her stranger is really Jack, the best man at her little sister’s wedding….awkward! Ada and Jack embark on a number of transportation modes to get to the wedding in Scotland while sparks fly and chemistry sizzles. It’s a wild ride full of self revelations and aspirations.

Ada is struggling—not just financially, but also emotionally—as she scrambles to reach her estranged sister’s destination wedding in Ireland with barely a penny to her name. When she misses her connecting flight, she finds an unexpected ally in Jack, a fellow stranded traveler also trying to make it to a wedding. As they bond over their misfortunes, Ada vents about her deep dislike for her sister’s fiancé and her dread of meeting his notorious best friend—only to discover that Jack is, in fact, the best man.

While some romcoms are light and breezy, this one offers something deeper. It has heart, grit, and a compelling exploration of what happens when life doesn’t go as planned. Beyond the romance, the story dives into themes of resilience and self-discovery, making it all the more rewarding. Ada and Jack’s struggles feel incredibly real, and their kindness and authenticity make it impossible not to root for them. Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy.

Wedding Dashers is a delightfully fun and charming romance that had me grinning from start to finish! With its mistaken identity twist, forced proximity, and laugh-out-loud travel mishaps, this book is the perfect mix of chaos and chemistry. Ada and Jack’s banter is sharp, their slow-burn attraction is irresistible, and the journey through Ireland adds the perfect touch of adventure and whimsy. If you love road-trip romances with heart, humor, and just the right amount of swoon, Wedding Dashers is a swoony read.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an arc. All opinions expressed are my own.

Full review to come on Goodreads and Amazon. Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for a review copy.

I absolutely LOVED this book! The perfect romance honestly with my favorite tropes of enemies to lovers, one bed, forced proximity. It reminded me of so many lovely rom coms in the UK.

If you liked the movie Leap Year, or a classic romcom with one bed, forced proximity, enemies to lovers this is a PERFECT debut novel

Everything gets wildly out of sorts when Ada is trying to get to Belfast after a cancelled flight, and thanks to an expired hotel voucher has a lovely meet cute with Jack, after both reaching for a tampon dumped out of her purse in frustration.

Turns out, they are headed to the same wedding, and she’s heard PLENTY about Jack’s antics from her sister. They end up traveling together and between mishaps, form a friendship… plus maybe more.

When travel plans go awry, two stranded wedding guests have to find their way to the destination together.

This was such a fun read full of great banter and chaotic travel moments as Ada and Jack raced against the clock to make it to her sister / his best friend's wedding. While they start off on the wrong foot, I loved watching them slowly get to know one another and nudge each other to discover what they truly want in life. It's full of chemistry and forced proximity as well as relatable moments of self doubt and everything going wrong at once. I loved the ending too!

Add this to your list to read if you're looking for an entertaining romcom.

Ada Gallman is having some issues getting to her sister Allison’s wedding. Of course, it might have helped if Allison had decided to marry Collin in the States. But no, she decided to get married in a castle in Ireland. And now Ada is stuck in London because her flight to Belfast was cancelled. And Ada has her sister’s custom veil, so she has to get there in time. Also, she’s the maid of honor. And since her longtime boyfriend has decided after eight years together that he wants to step back and think about things, Ada is travelling alone.

The airline does find her a flight the next morning and give Ada a hotel voucher she can use. But when she gets to the hotel, she finds that the airline gave her a voucher for the wrong night, and the hotel refuses to help her. She’s trying to decide if she’s going to try to talk to the manager or just give up and go back to the airport and spend the night there when her tears are interrupted by a man insisting she had taken his bag by mistake. Ada had, and when he offers to buy her a drink, she agrees. She doesn’t have much money for the trip, especially since her business went under and she’s living with her parents, so she says yes. Plus, he’s cute.

After a burger and chips with him, and an awkward misunderstanding about whether they were going to hook up or not, Ada gets a text about her flight being cancelled. Just as he gest the same text. And Ada realizes that the cute guy isn’t just a random cute guy. He’s Collin’s best friend and the best man at her sister’s wedding. Allison had warned her about Jack Houghton, saying he was a player. Ada knows that she’s not going to fall for his moves, but this means that she does have someone to share in her bad travel luck. There are no more flights for several days, so they turn to a train, a ferry, a bus, and a rental car to get to Ireland before the wedding, just about 80 hours away.

Ada and Jack find some time to laugh together on the trip as the hours add up. They spend some time seeing London and eating pizza in Scotland, they laugh and argue and share things about their lives. And as they get closer to the wedding, dealing with each travel hiccup as they come along, Ada can’t help but wonder if she’s starting to develop feelings for Jack, despite her long-term relationship still being up in the air. But mostly, she starts to feel more like herself than she has in years. After working so hard to take care of her sister and her boyfriend, it might finally be time for Ada to follow her own path, whether that includes a partner or not. She will just have to learn to follow her heart above all else.

Wedding Dashers is a fun rom com filled with travel difficulties and finding creative solutions to those. Ada and Jack have that movie chemistry as they flirt and bicker, make themselves vulnerable and put their walls up to protect their hearts. The way they come together to face all their challenges is inspiring and occasionally hilarious, and when the flirting finally explodes into something more, things get spicy. And the ending is perfect for these characters.

I had such a great time with Ada and Jack as they made their way to Ireland. I thought Wedding Dashers was a fun read, and these characters came to life throughout the story. There were lots of sweet surprises and funny moments, and I loved the arc of the story. Wedding Dashers is a modern take on a classic rom com, and it’s enough to make you believe in love again.

Egalleys for Wedding Dashers were provided by Berkley through NetGalley, with many thanks.

Huge thank you to @berkleypub @berittalksbooks @thephdivabooks @dg_reads and @netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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This was a fun rom com that takes the reader on a literal journey to a wedding. When the maid of honor and best man both get stranded they head to the hotel bar. Unbeknownst to them they are headed to the same wedding. Soon enough they are on the adventure of a lifetime to the wedding. Of course, there’s a bit of misadventures, travel chaos and love along the way!
This was super fun with a sweet ending and it’s out now!

I enjoyed this light rom-com. There were a couple of places in the plot where it lacked a little forward momentum (mainly during their travels to the wedding and then once they got to the wedding location) but I simultaneously thought that the characters were growing even though there wasn’t much happening. I liked getting to know both Jack and Ada and they felt genuine. There’s some open-door spice about 3/4 of the way through the book (one or two scenes). This wasn’t a stand-out for me but it wasn’t bad.

Thank you to the publisher - I received a complimentary eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars!

All of my friends who read this before me are laughing so hard because I swore up and down that this wasn’t the book for me, but here we are a face full of tears later and it’s me eating crow. Absolutely emotional and moving. Literally blindsided me with how much I loved Ada (she was almost too relatable). Want to tattoo this book on my face!!

Wedding Dashers was a fun and lighthearted romance that I think those who love to travel will enjoy!

I enjoyed the slow build of friendship between the two main characters, but I wish there had been more depth around Ada and her sister. Their relationship was a driving factor in the story and I think the book would have benefitted from more detail there.

The European road trip misadventure was a fun story, and the writing was pretty solid, although I did feel like there were some awkward scene breaks at times.

This one isn’t a new favorite, but it had a lot of charm and humor and kept me entertained while reading.

There’s an ongoing conversation happening in Romancelandia these days about tropes and the over usage of them to write and sell a book. In reality, tropes can be quite gimmicky and an easy way to market a book. Put up a cute little Instagram ready graphic, surround it with a half dozen tropes contained within the book and there you have it, easy-peasy lemon squeezy! It’s quick and fun and eye-popping if done correctly and it probably helps sell a lot of books that way.

The problem, however, lies in the actual writing of the book. A book needs a plot. It needs character development, it needs multifaceted characters who evolve and progress and grow through the book. If an author overrelies on tropes, then the book feels hollow, lacking in substance and depth.

I’m not going to say Wedding Dashers, by Heather McBreen, was bad. It truly wasn’t and in fact, I think a lot of people will actually probably really enjoy this book. However, there are a couple of big problems for me with this book and I just want to address them in this review.

First of all, let’s address the issue of tropes. This book has a fair amount. Our two MCs, Ada and Jack, meet while enroute to the same destination wedding at a castle in Ireland. She’s the bride to be’s older sister and maid of honor, he’s the groom’s best friend and best man. Flight cancellations and hotel reservation mishaps plus a luggage mixup all combine to put these two in the same location, miles and hours from their final destination just days before the wedding is to take place.

Ada, broke and without many other options, takes Jack’s offer to travel together and also his offer of sharing a hotel room the very first night they meet. If by now you’ve guessed that the first trope to pop up in this book is only one bed, then I’ll have some lovely parting gifts for you at the end of this review. (I’m kidding, there are no gifts, just the satisfaction of knowing that you were right). Ada, aside from being broke, is also brokenhearted. She is, to quote Ross Gellar from Friends, on a break from her boyfriend of 8 years (not her idea), just recently had to close down her tattoo parlor business, and hasn’t spoken to her sister in quite a while as she was less than enthused to learn Allison was marrying some guy she just met. She grew up with a single mom and since her mom worked long hours to support them, Ada became the de facto mom to her sister, and as such, is overly involved and always trying to fix everything for Allison, which includes a series of toxic relationships with problematic men. Given that Ada barely knows the fiance (a plastic surgeon named Collin who happens to be close to a decade older than his would be bride), it stands to reason that she’s not sold on this relationship or the upcoming wedding. The interesting thing about Ada is that she holds nothing back, she is a complete open book and not shy about stating what she wants.

Jack, on the other hand, is a closed book. He is not giving anything away although it’s pretty obvious from the get go that he’s definitely hiding something big, a revelation that comes around the 60% mark of the book and while it’s not all that shocking, I will refrain from spoiling the big secret. If Ada is all hearts and emotions and desperate to get back together with her ex, then Jack is the complete antithesis, not sold on relationships and love and monogamy and perhaps human emotions in general. The problem is that he feels more like a caricature than a real character, and while there is obviously a change in how he feels towards the beginning of the book to how he feels at the end of the book, the journey to how he gets from point A to point B seems to be lacking a bit.

The two embark on a journey that becomes increasingly absurd, with repeated shared hotel rooms including one that forces them to pretend to be a married couple (fake relationship trope, check!) and involves a bus ride, a train ride, a borrowed car that inevitably breaks down midjourney, a ferry ride, and an unfortrunate night out at a pub that ends with Ada vomiting on Jack and him taking care of her. While their journey starts with them at odds with each other, by the time they make it to the wedding venue, the antagonism has turned to lust and they eventually act on their attraction and sleep together the night before the wedding, around three quarters of the way through the book.

This brings me to my second problem, the pacing of this book. From the time they meet to the actual wedding is maybe just a few days, not even a whole week. Once the wedding occurs, they have their third act breakup and then, in the course of two chapters, a whole year has passed before the big finale and HEA. I wish that the author had dedicated a little more space to those 52 weeks because it really does make the end of the book feel rushed and the HEA feels a little less earned that way. I’m not saying I don’t buy that these two have big feelings for each other but the way it jumps from them separating at the end of the wedding to their reunion a year later feels really random, especially in light of the fact that it’s pretty clearly mentioned that in that one year, there was zero contact or communication between them.

In writing this review, I’ve realized that this book would have made a very cute rom com movie (and still could! I’d definitely watch it!). However, what makes a rom com movie work doesn’t necessarily translate the same way to a book. Pacing and character development issues aside, I think there’s still an audience for this book. But for me, this book lands in that unfortunate category of fine but forgettable.

after some thought, i did in fact come back to this one! yes, it’s true jack is a humongous jerk almost the entire book, but his backstory kindaaa helps deflate that and maybe ada deserved better. who knows?

yet i truly believed in their development together and the forced proximity truly helped to bring them closer emotionally, even when confronted their issues got tough. also, for a first time sex scene this was steamy as hell and that didn’t hurt 🙂‍↕️

Wedding Dashers, by Heather McBreen, after spending the bulk of her money trying to get to her sister’s location, wedding and Ireland. She learns her flight has been canceled, but good news. She gets a hotel voucher. Only to arrive at the hotel and learn it was for the night before. flustered and with nowhere to go and no money to get there, she grabs the wrong suitcase that belongs to Ryan. Fortunately for Ada, he is also going to the wedding as he is the best man and decides to take her on and help her get there. Problem solved right… easy-going… If it hasn’t gone wrong yet it will because nothing but uncanny problems and Sue. She has the hots for Ryan and although she is taking a break from her long time boyfriend she’s still pondering their question as well. there were some things I really liked about Ada and some things I really didn’t but in the long run by the end of the book I loved her. when writing a book with so many tropes it’s a thin line between writing an original trophy story and one that’s been told and although the scenario is similar, I really like this book I like that the ride wasn’t the whole book and we got to see them in different scenarios and I absolutely loved the ending. This is an awesome troppy, swoony romance and it’s one I definitely recommend.#NetGalley, #BerkeleyPublishing, #HeatherMcBreen, #WeddingDashers,