Whip-smart, heartfelt and joyful, Alison Rose Greenberg’s Bad Luck Bridesmaid is a celebration of complicated women and a power-anthem to live your truth.
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SYNOPSIS
It’s official: Zoey Marks is the cursed bridesmaid that no engagement can survive. Ten years, three empire waist dresses, and ZERO brides have walked down the aisle.
After strike three, Zoey is left wondering if her own ambivalence towards marriage has rubbed off on those she loves. And when her building distrust of matrimony culminates in turning down a proposal from her perfect All-American boyfriend, Rylan Harper III, she and Rylan are both left heartbroken, leaving Zoey to wonder: what is it exactly about tying the knot that makes her want to run in the opposite direction?
Enter Hannah Green: Zoey’s best friend, who announces that she’s marrying a guy she just met (cue eye roll). At a castle. In gorgeous, romantic Ireland, where Rylan will be in attendance, and Zoey will be a bridesmaid. It’ll be fine.
Okay, the woman definition of fine (NOT FINE).
Determined to turn her luck around, Zoey accepts her role and vows to get Hannah down the aisle—all the while praying her best friend’s wedded bliss will allow her to embrace marriage and get Rylan back.
But as the weekend goes on, Zoey is plagued with more questions than answers. Can you be a free spirit, yet still want a certain future? Can you have love and be loved on your terms? And how DO you wrangle a bossy falcon into doing your bidding?
“Hannah, I love my life. I’m not missing anything.”
“You can’t miss what you don’t know.”
Hannah sat up straighter, taking my olive hands into her pale fingers and staring wide-eyed at my face. I arched my neck back, fearful of the owlish, tipsy, heartbroken version of my shy best friend. I had taught her too well.
“I want you to feel all the big feels. You’re the most passionate person I’ve ever met, and you’ve never given yourself a chance to have that with another person. Seriously, how are you the woman who loves rom-coms, yet isn’t curious about a happy ending?”
“I have happy endings all the time. Way above the national average. My mother would be alarmed, I promise.”
Hannah exhaled, shaking her head. “You tell guys you don’t want a relationship right from the start, and it’s a cop-out.”
“No, it’s the truth.”
“No, you wave a white flag before you even try. I understand you’re afraid of giving someone else the power to hurt you, but Zoey, it’s time for you to let your guard down.”
In almost twenty-nine years, this was the first time Hannah had read me wrong. In her defense, even I didn’t know how to explain it. I wasn’t afraid of getting hurt. I wasn’t afraid of love. I feared the implied next step. Panic lay in the “then comes” part of that nursery rhyme. Killing two birds with one stone was a percipient choice—if “first comes love” never comes, then I didn’t have to confront the marriage part. I wanted to say this aloud, but instead, I stared at Hannah with a thin-lipped expression. I usually let my hard truths run wild, but I had learned as a toddler that there was no reason to yuck someone else’s yum. What good could come of telling my hopeless romantic best friend that I believed marriage was an unrealistic goal?
“Hannah, let’s just pretend I never brought any of this up, okay?”
“Why? Because this conversation makes you uncomfortable?”
Yes.
“No, I just think we have different views on romance.”
“Zoey, I love how you see the world. This is me telling you that you’re slamming the door on seeing a really important part of it. You can’t go around telling people what they need to hear, and then not listen to them when they open their mouths.”
“But it’s more fun that way.”
Hannah glared at me. I threw my hands up in the air, giving her the floor.
“Okay, say what you want to say.”
“If you let someone in, you’d be surprised what you might find and what you might learn about yourself.”
There she was, using my initial words against me—such a lawyer. The only love “surprises” I was aware of involved the prize of a serial cheater and a sexual awakening. I liked the unknown, but not when it was in someone else’s hands. I had spent eight years being a casualty of my parents’ realized dreams, and I had no intention of repeating that pattern. I would not be pulled down someone else’s goal-oriented road.
“Mark my words, the only reason you’re weird about love and marriage is because you haven’t fallen yet,” Hannah said, as if winking into a crystal ball.
Any eagerness to test out the theory was drowned out by the memory of Jackson’s guttural sobs when Sara handed him the engagement ring back in her office. I opened my mouth to say just that—
“And don’t even try to use those Chelsea and Sara broken engagements as an excuse.”
Goddamnit.
“Look . . . I’m single, and I fucking love it. I’m happy, Hannah.
I’m alone, not lonely, and you don’t have to worry about me, ever, okay? Now, what can we do to get you happy?” I asked, rubbing her back, and then offering to take sexy-but-tasteful photos for her Hinge profile.
It was the first time in my life when I didn’t long for anything. I had a job I loved with no one above me to tell me how to do it. I was living in the most bustling city in the world. I felt energized by the mere act of walking outside my door.
I, Zoey Marks, was enough.
Then came Rylan Harper the Third.
From BAD LUCK BRIDESMAID by Alison Rose Greenberg. Copyright © 2022 by the author and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
