To Have and To Harley by Regina Cole Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca on August 7, 2018
Genres: Contemp Romance, motorcycle club
Pages: 384
Format: eBook
Source: Advance Reader Copy, NetGalley
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You may now kiss the biker
Bethany Jernigan owes her bestie. Big time. So when wedding planning overburdens the bride-to-be, Bethany steps in to handle the nitty-gritty. But the guy in charge isn't anything like she imagined. He's gruff, tattooed, and 100% male. His staff is even rougher around the edges, and it's not long before she feels as if she's stepped into some kind of crazy alternate reality.Are those...bikers? Arguing about wedding favors?
Trey Harding never wanted this to get so out of hand. One little lie somehow snowballed into a world of dresses and flowers and food and holy-hell-he's-in-over-his-head. But it's not like he can confess he's not the wedding planner he's pretending to be--especially now that he's falling for the maid of honor! His charade is becoming a farce, and as engines rev and ribbons fly, Trey's running out of time to figure out how to tell the truth without losing his new family, his crew...or the woman of his dreams.
Someone on Twitter brought this book to my attention, and I mean, come on, a biker gang who winds up as accidental wedding planners? That sounds hilarious!
And it was, mostly.
Bethany is asked by her best friend to help plan her wedding, and she of course says yes.
Trey was dumped at a gas station as a baby, and left. He grew up in the system, and had a rough life. Now he runs the Iron Shadows, and he knows that sometimes the family you make is the only family you need. Until a private investigator shows up and tells him that his mother has been looking for him.
How can he reconcile the mother in his head who dumped him in a gas station bathroom with the saint of a woman who’s been looking for him since he was kidnapped? She even built and named a youth center after him, for crying out loud! How can he live up to the kind of expectations a woman like her must have? He panics and after seeing all the wedding magazines on her table, he tells her he’s a wedding planner.
You guys, it’s hysterical. He’s adorable and his guys are so sweet and cute trying to get the wedding planning off to a good start. These interactions were the absolute best parts of the book.
However, please suspend belief, because these bikers do not act like any bikers I’ve ever met (and I’ve only ever met nice ones, not “turf owning” ones), and definitely not like a motorcycle gang.
Trey and the Shadows are like a Robin Hood type gang. They beat the crap out of anybody who bothers to sell drugs on their turf, and they take care of their neighborhood. I’m okay with that. They find out someone is dealing meth on their streets and they aim to take care of them, but it goes deeper than just a dealer. It’s a whole operation.
Bethany doesn’t believe for one second that this biker looking guy is a wedding planner, so she agrees to let him help in order to expose him as someone trying to swindle her friend. She finds out soon enough that Trey isn’t trying to swindle anyone, and the DNA test proved he is indeed her friend’s brother, but that doesn’t mean she trusts him.
Sigh.
And Trey doesn’t give her any reason to.
These two characters lie a lot. And you know, that didn’t even bother me. When Trey and Bethany begin getting serious, she finally wants to know what’s going on. With his explanation, she assumes he’s an undercover cop. It’s easier for him to let her believe that, since he doesn’t feel he deserves any of this. The amazing mom, the great girl, the life he missed out on. He just lets it go. And again I’m actually okay with that!
What did bother me? Bethany. Not the whole book or anything, I liked her up until this point. She blows his cover like 3 times. And yes I know he isn’t a real undercover cop, but she believes he is. And she tells everyone. She calls him and gets so twisted over the fact he can’t call back. Okay here’s the deal. I have real life experience here, so it irritated me. And I’d like to point out that anyone who has ever watched any form of Law & Order or CSI knows that if someone is undercover, they can’t always answer the phone. Anyone who is married to a cop knows this. It drove me nuts.
The other big thing that bothered me? Trey had a couple massive freak outs when he stayed the night with Bethany because his biker gang couldn’t handle their crap while he was gone. Seriously. These guys he rides with, fights with, etc and he what, has to babysit them?! Nope.
What I wish I’d seen more of was the guys wedding planning. This author shines when she’s going for light and fun. Anything serious felt contrived. But her lighthearted fun worked. I could absolutely see this book as a Rom Com movie. Seriously. I want to read the next book to see where this goes, but if the fun isn’t there, I don’t see myself continuing on with this series. Fingers crossed the next book is lighthearted and fun!
***ARC courtesy of Sourcebooks Casablanca via Netgalley
