My Big Gay Secret Wedding (Wedding Disasters)

The non-wedding party from book one takes a non-honeymoon trip to Vegas. Almost bride, influencer Cher, her non-bridesmaids and her almost groom Raine along with his non-best man, Mac travel to Sin City to celebrate not getting married. And to check out talent for the LGBTQ+/Trans fundraiser that Cher and Raine planned when they were still together. The trip is especially stressful for Mac. He's there to make sure people pleaser/ never can say no Raine doesn't marry Cher out of guilt. After five shots of alcohol, non-drinker Mac figures out how to keep Raine 'safe'. The next morning the two wake up naked. And married. Even though Raine is in love with Mac, he agrees to an annulment . He refuses to be the one to ruin his straight best friend's life. Best friends to lovers is one of my favorite tropes. I love when the lightbulb goes off and the 'straight' guy realizes maybe he isn't. And that he's in love with his best friend. It's a little slower with Mac. He knows he's attracted to Raine, but .... he's straight. Mac and Raine have loved each other since they were kids, but only just realize that they're in love. The two are hot together, even with a pillow wall between them. The mains from both earlier books, Zye and Miles and Isaac, his prince and son all play a part. But it's Cher's mom, Mamma Gladdie that takes the cake. She's supportive of Mac and rather menacing to Raine. The worldbuilding is nice. There's travel from Missouri to Kennybunk Maine, commercially and on…

Read through Kindle Unlimited. 3 ½ Stars My Big Gay Secret Wedding is the first I’ve read by this author. The blurb says it can be read as a standalone but is better read as part of a series. I did it backwards and read this first. I could tell I was missing a lot as I paged through, so I read the first two after I completed this. I recommend reading them all and in order. Ha! I had a hard time believing these two have been best friends most of their lives. There are way too many things they don't know about each other, deliberately kept from each other, etc. Their interactions are awkward and painful to watch most of the time. I’m not saying that it’s a bad book. I enjoyed different aspects of it, just not the believability of their friendship. I did believe in their romantic relationship by the end. The social media influencer thread didn’t take up too much page time and I like that it didn’t take over the story. There is just enough to cover the fallout from the original wedding, but also the fear of exposure of Mac and Rainn’s wedding. There are some lovely secondary characters, and also some annoying and distasteful ones. I’m glad I read this because it led me to the others in this series that I really enjoyed. I look forward to more from this author.

This is more like 3.5 stars. I felt liked this book would have really benefitted from a few more beta readers. Overall, the story was compelling and kept me interested, but the pacing felt choppy and abrupt in some parts, and unnecessarily long and complicated in other parts. The transitions between events were not smooth. I feel like some of that was trying to “plug” other books in this series/world and/or future books. One of the major plot points was “closed” in a VERY unsatisfying way, but others may disagree and I don’t want to spoil it. 😒 I really felt for the MCs, especially Mac, I can relate to feeling like you have to be what others expect of you.

Well written story and well developed characters. Loved this whole series and you need to read it from the beginning! So emotional! I was so involved it was like being with my family!

OPINION: Rainn was supposed to get married but didn’t. The influencer he was going to marry called it off but that was overshadowed by his very public, very ugly conversation with his father. The father has created nothing but pain in his life but was the only parent he had life, so it was complicated. None of that mattered because he had Mac. They had been best friends for as long as they could remember. Where there was one there was the other and when they decided to get over the non-marriage in Vegas getting married to each other was not on the agenda. Mac was straight, he didn’t like men but he did love Rainn but “not like that”. There is a lot of moving parts to this story. A very complicated family and a lot of family dynamics. Generally, this is low angst, and the two men have a lot of chemistry. It took me a minute to get moving, but once I got into the story, I liked it a lot. There were twists and turns, and something I really didn’t expect. The overall theme is that humans are messy, and this family has a lot of it. While they navigate the twists and turns of their family, Mac starts figuring out his truth. He keeps saying how straight he is, but he most certainly consummated his marriage..many, many times. He desires Rainn and wants to be more intimate. Rainn is his person. He knows it now. He has to figure out how that fits together with his family and how to keep this marriage that he wants to keep together. Rainn just wants his best friend to be happy, and…