The Worst Best Man: A Novel

The Worst Best Man
By Mia Sosa

Fantasitc rom-com with a lot of sex thrown in beginnoing at the “couples retreat” for those with sensitive eyes because it does get very graphic. Had to check twice it was a light fluffy read and not a ...okay, it’s a light hearted Harlequin romance novel. How’s that for all us old timers who remember those novels?

Max wakes up and realizes his “perfect” and the “apple of his parent’s eye,” brother, Andrew has texted Max, loosely, “thanks for your great advice, I can now see things more clearly. I’ve decided not to get married to Lina. Please let her know. I’m going MIA so you can deal with it and I don’t. Don’t worry about Lina, she’s an angel and won’t give you hel!.” His father texts him “get your a$$es down here for the wedding that’s about to start.” He freaks out because he overslept and can’t remember what he told Andrew since they both got stone drunk due to the bachelor party. He later goes and finds Lina and she is livid and hates Max because she reads, the part of his hand in why Andrew decided to bail on their wedding day, of all things. “We were so good and he didn’t annoy me,” speal and to Lina, she honestly thought that was enough to marry him. “Satisfying sex” personally would have given me a warning. I need more than just satisfying sex. Shoot, did I just write that out loud? SHe texts her mom, and her aunts in Portugese to get them to come up right away because she knows that will get their attention. Afterall, how can this happen to a wedding planner?!

Three years later, Carolina Santos, “Lina” is at another wedding she helped coordinate and the bride’s seafoam green wedding dress makes its entrance. Then Lina’s assistant comes up with amused twinkles in her eyes which can only mean there’s trouble and it’s for Lina. She finds the groomsmen all had one too many drinks and one of them stupidly shaves off the groom’s eyebrows. Lina quickly thinks of how to fix it. When she returns from her car with a makeup bag, she sees some woman who stands near the groom, calmly surveying what Lina is doing. Lina goes into action and whips out eyebrow glue and makeup eyeshadow powder and gives the groom eyebrows. So what if he looks like the game “angry bird,” as one of the kids declares. She saves the day and the woman who was surveying turns out to be none other than the cousin of the groom and her name is Rebbeca Cartwright, the Cartwright Hotel Group as in the hotel empire! RC is so impressed, she hands Lina a card and wants to have her interview for rebranding her 3 hotels to host weddings. Lina who didn’t think she was going to accept at first had no choice as her place had a rent hike for her business and she needed another place to run her business. What a coo if she winds up with this job!! Lina quickly asked about her assistant, Jaslene and the salaries. RC states, if Lina winds up getting the job as
director of the staff, it would be 50K for her assistant and 100K for Lina for all three hotels. Again, RC wanted to hire Lina the minute she met her at Rebecca's cousin's wedding where her cousin's eyebrows got shaved off because of this stupid groomsmen. She admired Lina's cool exterior at handling the situation and that the bride's outfit looked like a bunch of green post-it notes gathered together and formed a wedding dress. It was heinous but Lina likes outside of the box. Except this was outside the hemisphere so even she couldn't believe it.

Lina at first, dismisses the idea until her rent hike for her work place. She goes to see Rebecca and there she finds out there is another applicant who Rebecca had contacted prior to meeting Lina. She now wants both opposing teams to prepare mock website landing pages, social media, graphics and storyboards for any video elements to show who can be the better fit for bringing her hotel to be THE spot for weddings. Here’s the catch, she will be working with one of the brothers from a marketing firm. Lina thinks, that’s fine as long as they stay out of her way. In walks Max and Andrew Hartley, as in Andrew Hartley, her ex-fiance and her horrible and despicable could have been an idiot for a brother in law, Max! Max and Andrew Hartley both work for their mother, “Atlas Communications who divorced their father and still made a name for herself. She goes into a panic and pretends this is the first time she’s met them and shakes their hands in a professional manner. RC suspected nothing. RC pairs Lina up with Max and Andrew will be partnered with the other opponent. RC wants both opposing teams to prepare mock website landing pages, social media, graphics and storyboards for any video elements to show who can be the better fit for bringing her hotel to be THE spot for weddings and transition her hotel to be a wedding venue. They have a spa, their own restaurant and of course, it’s a hotel.

While dealing with this, Lina’s own cousin, Natalina is marrying and her fun and colorful family are hysterical at what they want and how not to hurt bruised feelings and who can we put the aunt nobody wants to be around.

Still angered and blaming Max for the demise of her wedding, she has no choice but to work with Max, so long as he knows the rules, “Stay out of her way.” Max being Max, is not the silent type and he does say his two cents worth. As Lina is openly hard to deal with as they work together, they both can’t help noticing the nice attributes of each other and the fact that Max keeps trying to make amends to Lina for his part of the wedding fiasco. He even winds up charming her family as she brings him over so that they could skewer him, as he’s working on the campaign with her. As time goes on, even Lina’s resolve starts to melt and she starts listening to Max’s ideas.

Originally Max thought of the “Wedding Fairy Godmother” vision but decided to scrape the ideas when they both went to the “fake couples’ retreat” because Lina had to do a look over but her car broke down and there was no other “room at the inn'' except the couple retreat, it was there where Max Lina’s bad moment as a paralegal getting flustered and then cried on the job, showing her vulnerability, she was fired for it. There was a solid reason why she’s a wall of cool emotions because she can’t and won’t show her vulnerability, ever again. That can be a plus rather than a hindrance because in a crisis, she will always be cool headed and quick thinking.

As Max and Lina continue to grow closer by the moment, Max realizes after speaking to his best friend, Dean, he’s in love with Lina. He goes to the bridal shop where she’s helping Natalina and as they are kissing and he’s working up the nerve to declare his love for her, a cough interrupts them. It’s Andrew!!! Andrew is shocked, yes, but then he goes into douchebag mode and tells his younger brother, “it’s always been a competition for you,” and “you’ll never be anything but second best.” Leading Max to think this is all about his ex-girlfriend, Emily, who stated she preferred Andrew over Max, even though she’s dating Max. Ouch! This devastates Max as he realizes, yes he really is sloppy seconds because Emily wanted Andrew and settled for Max. You think this is the worst? Nope. There’s more. The shocking part of the book is that fact that everything was hinged upon “what Max had said to Andrew'' that convinced Andrew to break things off with Lina on their wedding day and not get married. It turns out that Max never said anything to Andrew to convince him to call off the wedding. He just didn’t want to marry Lina and needed to pin it on Max so that he’d be the fall guy and Andrew would look good in front of everyone, especially their mom. “Max, you didn’t encourage me to cancel the wedding. You spent most of the night talking about where you’d spend your honeymoon if you ever got married.” P407 To add insult to injury, he leans over to Lina and whispers, “Costa Rica’s his fave, by the way.” Then Andrew drops another revelation that Lina even went as far as to call Andrew after the break up to see if they could work it out, something Max did not know about. Andrew had lied about that infamous text he sent to Max indicting it was Max’s advice as to what had incited the break up because Andrew didn’t want to face up to Mom and Dad alone and it was much easier to deal with their disappointment if his younger and mega-persuasive brother took the blame for all of it. He smugly walks away from the bridal shop. Okay, now Max is rightfully and completely devastated and breaks up with Lina thinking he’s not even worthy of her and that she settled for the other brother. Feeling completely devastated by Andrew’s revelations, Max feels completely beaten, second best, and a total idiot and never going to be Lina’s first choice, he breaks up with her. Her heart is broken and she starts feeling her tears come down after he leaves. They will remain professional regardless and Max states he will continue to work with her on the campaign to get her to win the spot as the wedding planner for Cartwright Group.

After Lina’s presentation to Rebecca and Max bringing everything to her and being totally supportive, even in light that they broke up, showed Lina he's always there for her. Several days after the presentation, RC calls Lina to tell her she is the winner and has won the position of wedding planner. Suddenly, Andrew is at her store visiting and apologizes to her. He acknowledges he’s actually been riding on Max’s coattail and will be going to Atlanta where he’ll be welcomed with open arms to do marketing. He has 8 weeks to figure out who he is and what he wants and what fills his passion. He even admits his brother, Max is better at Andrew’s job. Lina exclaims, “your mother fired you?” Sheepishly, Andrew concedes it was mutual.

Lina has come to fully realize, she did indeed fall in love with the right brother. Too bad Max didn’t realize there was no competition. She replays all the key moments where she has allowed Max to see her at her most vulnerable moments and never held it over her. Love is allowing the other person to see you at your most weakest moments because you allowed them to and instead of making fun of you, they comfort you and help you get empowered by it and overcome it. It’s not until the reception where Lina makes her toast to Natalia and Paolo’s that she speaks to Max from her heart and uses “how she finally understands what love is.” He realizes the speech is similar to the one he gave her at the retreat and tells her he loves her and regardless if he’s her second or 100th choice, he’s the best choice for her. With that, they get back together and Lina’s mom has won $20 from their aunt. She was betting on Max to win Lina back as he came to his senses.

"Lina did love Andrew, once upon a time but she certainly doesn't love him now. She wanted to marry him because she DIDN'T love him. Love means breaking down your walls for the person who's willing to scale them. Andrew never tried. But I did. Because I am that person for her.

In the end, it doesn't matter if I'm Lina's first, second, or fifteenth choice; what matters is that I'm the right choice." Max coming to the realization he's the BEST man for Lina.p456

I smell another wedding in a year or two. ♥️♥️

What I adored about this book is how the author, Ms. Sosa tries to at first make Max a little bit of a douchebag but in reality, he is so beyond amendable and lovable, it makes my sweet tooth ache for more sugar. I love the “badass” Lina has a touch exterior and yet is pure cotton candy once you get through the hard layer of cement. Sure it’s the typical, hate/love to hate to okay, I’ll tolerate you but secretly, you’re hot as anything” genre. To break away from all the heavy reading, sometimes, you want to read a fun/guilty to read book. This fills that void.
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I took away a star because the sex was a bit too graphic for me. That's me, though and this is my review. ;)

I adored this book!!
Brother's ex fiance type of forbidden romance. Set in a professional atmosphere, with a huge motivation for revenge on the ex-bride's side. The pranks and back an forth in the begging are absolutely addictive, I kept wanting more of their bickering.
As feelings started forming later on, there was such an honest take on how a person finds themselves having feelings for someone that just came on so organically.
The chemistry they have and they power couple these two are to become, just ohh lala. Love everything about this book!

The main character is spicy and bold! I loved it from start to finish.

This book is rated MS for “Mad Steamy!”

I enjoyed the story, the characters were funny and the dashes of cultural references were just enough. I had to Google a lot of the portugués phrases but I didn’t mind. This book is so fun and light! We live a good enemies to lovers storyline!

It’s a def must read!

The Worst Best Man is a hate-turns-to-love book about a jilted wedding planner and her ex-fiancee's brother. It's a fun, upbeat, colorful romance with a Brazilian background. I found it quite vibrant.