A un détail près

Kristan Higgins is one of the few remaining auto-read contemporary romance authors on my list. Her heroines are capable, not ditzy, and although they may have some baggage they never fall into angsty naval gazing. Her heroes tend to be a little on the gruff side, but usually they come through in the end.

The Best Man uses a premise that could have easily veered into parody but thankfully doesn't - the bride left at the altar when her fiance comes out of the closet. It's to Higgins' credit that this isn't played for zany laughs and that the relationship between our heroine Faith and her gay fiance Jeremy's behavior is portrayed as realistic for an innocent young girl looking for her prince and a young man desperately trying to fit in. My only complaint is that for the first half of the book I actually thought Faith would have been better off with a gay husband than with Levi, the nominal hero of the book, who is either rude or dismissive of her for no apparent reason other than the fact that he is from the wrong side of the tracks and assumes she is a snobby bitch.

Fortunately for both Faith and the reader, Levi stops acting like a jerk eventually, and the grand gesture he offers to the heroine is so wonderful and life changing that all else is forgiven. Plus his earnest but sometimes misguided attempts to care for his younger sister in the wake of their mother's death go a long way towards redeeming his character.

At times the book's humor is a bit broad, most notably in a subplot concerning the creative sex life of Faith's older sister and her husband, but there are other, more heartfelt subplots that compensate for that weakness.

Apparently The Best Man is the first novel in a new series, and Faith's sister Honor may be next in line to headline her own story. I enjoyed spending time with these characters and look forward to seeing them again, as I know I will continue to read anything Higgins writes.