"Laugh out loud funny twist on the Julia Roberts' movie, with a more interesting, sympathetic version"
Reviewed by Patricia Woodside
Posted July 20, 2011
Romance
Scientist Sadie Beecham has met the man of her dreams.
Until her roommate and childhood friend, Meg, waltzes in—and
steals his heart. Sadie tries to walk a thin line between
being a supportive friend and a woman determined to get her
man while she keeps Trey Kincaid, Meg's older, pesky
brother, at bay. Why can't Trey see that she and the good
doctor are meant to be together, and why, all of sudden, is
Trey capturing her attention in ways he never has before?
I am not a fan of the film on which this book is based, My
Best Friend's Wedding starring Julia Roberts. The movie
just never did it for more me. But I absolutely loved Abby
Gaines' HER BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING. The twists that Gaines
added, to make the deluded heroine the best friend of the
bride, not the groom, and to make the bride's brother
interested in Sadie, made the entire cast of characters more
interesting. This, along with more interesting conflicts,
made them more sympathetic than the film versions. Then,
Gaines' style of writing made HER BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING
laugh out loud funny. Each time Sadie was thwarted in her
attempt to get closer to the doctor, I couldn't wait to see
how Trey would respond and how in his response, he would
draw Abby closer to him. I also loved that Meg, the
seemingly ditzy friend, doesn't get short shrift. She gets
to work through her issues and evolve so that the ending
brings happiness for her as well as for Sadie.
SUMMARY
When did Sadie Beecham get those curves? She'd always been
the geek next door, his baby sister Meg's brainy best
friend. Smart, sure. But hot? He never would have imagined
it…before. Now, Trey Kincaid's imagining all sorts of
things. And none of them has to do with Sadie's gifted mind.
A mind, he discovers, she's clearly lost. Because she thinks
she's in love with Meg's fiancé. And that's an obsession
he's determined to put an end to—one way or the other.
ExcerptChapter One
“I might,” Sadie Beecham said briskly, “bring someone
home with me for Nancy’s birthday party.”
Silence.
Sadie shook the cordless phone. “Mom?”
“Oh, honey.” Her mother’s voice was a mere breath down
the line. “Have you met The One?”
“Mom! I’ve brought guys home before.” Sadie stepped away
from the beef bourguignon simmering on the stove for
tonight’s celebratory dinner and patted her damp forehead
with a paper towel. Her bungalow’s ancient air-conditioning
wasn’t up to the challenge of keeping the kitchen cool
during the heat of a Memphis summer.
“Not in the last ten years, dear,” Mary-Beth Beecham
said. “The last one was that boy with the piercing in his lip.”
Sadie shuddered, and knew her mother was doing the same.
That was a long time ago. A brief attempt during her
sophomore year at Princeton to prove she could tread the
wild side just like any other coed. A theory she’d rapidly
disproved.
“Okay, I haven’t brought anyone home lately. But you’ve
met guys I’ve dated. This is no big deal, Mom.”
The last thing she needed was her parents acting as if
they were meeting a prospective son-in-law. Even if that’s
exactly what he was.
Sadie opened the kitchen window in the hope of creating a
breeze. On the back porch, her latest batch of
plants—camellias and limonium—had died in their pots,
despite the expensive soil nutrients she’d fed them. The
neighbor’s cat must have been doing its business in them again.
“I want to know all about your young man,” Mary-Beth
demanded.
Sadie turned her back on the limp, browning foliage.
“He’s a doctor.”
A squawk down the phone. “A doctor! He sounds wonderful.”
Sadie couldn’t help grinning in response to her mom’s
enthusiasm. “He’s very nice,” she admitted. He’s perfect.
The doorbell rang. Phew, saved from descending into
girlish chitchat, a skill she’d never mastered. “Mom, I need
to go. He’s just arrived. Meg gets back tonight, too, so
we’re all having dinner.” Dinner for three—she couldn’t wait.
“Okay, dear, you go. Give Meg a hug for me, tell her not
to worry, we have her mom’s party well in hand. And call me
soon. I can’t wait to tell people about this doctor of
yours,” Mary-Beth added archly.
Sadie puffed out an exasperated breath. “Mom, no need to
tell the whole world.” She was still fending off inquiries
from her parents’ friends about when she was going to win
the Nobel Prize. Mary-Beth had made the exaggerated claim
during her last visit, boasting about Sadie’s brilliance as
a seed biologist.
“Just your father, then,” her mom soothed.
“Fine.” Behind Sadie, another long trill of the doorbell
suggested impatience. Then a thump on the door, and the
handle rattling. Seemed Daniel was as eager to see her as
she was to see him. Sadie’s irritation evaporated. “Coming,”
she sang.
She set the phone back on its stand and hurried to the
door. “Sorry,” she called, as she unlocked the deadlock. She
flung the door wide. “Come in—Meg!”
She just managed not to feel disappointed it was Meg
Kincaid, her childhood next-door neighbor, best friend
forever and now roommate on the doorstep, rather than
Daniel. “Welcome home! I wasn’t expecting you just yet...why
didn’t you let yourself in?”
“My key’s buried somewhere in there.” Meg indicated the
trundle suitcase next to her. She hugged Sadie. “The flight
landed an hour early. It’s so great to be home. Six weeks
was way too long...even if it was Paris.” She stood back as
Sadie maneuvered the case over the threshold for her.
Meg slipped out of the high-heeled red pumps that were
part of her flight attendant uniform and flexed her toes on
the polished wooden floorboards. “Man, that feels better.”
She pushed her dark bangs off her face, an endearing,
reflexive gesture that never achieved anything—her hair
settled right where it had been. She’d flown halfway across
the world, yet she looked as fresh and pretty as if she’d
stepped out of a Cosmo article titled “How to Look Your
Best, 24/7.”
“I need a drink.” She padded down the hallway behind
Sadie. “Something smells good.”
“I hope so. I followed the recipe exactly, so as long as
Martha Stewart knows what she’s talking about...” Having
missed out on the cooking lessons her mom had given her
sister, Sadie wasn’t as confident as she’d like to be.
In the kitchen, Meg absorbed the sparkling state of
Sadie’s glass-fronted cupboards and the clear counter. Her
sigh was part satisfaction, part envy. “This place is so
tidy when I’m not here.”
“Boarding school discipline,” Sadie reminded her. “My
secret weapon. Besides, it’s not as if you’re here even when
you are here,” she joked as she pulled a bottle of pinot
grigio from the fridge. She didn’t know how Meg managed to
sleep at all between her party lifestyle and her job. She
reached over to the counter, where three wineglasses were
neatly lined up.
“Three glasses?” Jetlag or no, Meg didn’t miss a thing.
Sadie busied herself pouring even amounts of wine into
two of the glasses. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“A man?” Meg’s squeal was gratifying. She grabbed the
purse she’d slung over the back of a dining chair. “I’d
better put my face on and get out of this uniform—we don’t
want your boyfriend thinking your best friend’s a slob.”
“You’ve never looked slobbish in your life...and besides,
he’s just a friend.” She didn’t want Meg getting
over-excited the way her mom had.
Meg tilted her head to one side. “Now you’ve got me
interested.”
What was that supposed to mean? Sadie had listened to
friends revealing their I’m-in-love stories over many a
glass of wine, but she realized now she’d failed to observe
the nuances. She hoped she wasn’t blushing. Top research
scientists don’t blush, she told herself sternly.
Meg took a slug of her wine and set her glass down. “Two
minutes.” She patted Sadie’s arm, then headed to her
bedroom. She’d never in her life freshened up in two
minutes, so Sadie didn’t expect to see her for a while.
She poured some wine for Daniel—pinot grigio was his
favorite—and wiped up a few drops that had spilled on the
stainless steel counter. She rinsed out the dishcloth and
tucked it in the wire basket in the cupboard beneath the sink.
The doorbell rang. Once. Briefly. That was Daniel, no
impatient banging on the door or rattling the handle. A man
confident in himself, who liked to do things right. Just
like her.
No wonder she’d fallen in love with him so fast.
Sadie forced herself to slow her walk, but she couldn’t
contain her goofy grin as she opened the door. “Hey.”
“Hi, Sadiebug.” Daniel had come up with the nickname the
first time they’d had lunch together. She loved it.
He stepped inside, his kiss landing at the corner of her
mouth. Reminding her of the embrace they’d shared last
night. Their first proper kiss, after a delicious dinner at
the nearby Two Trees Grill, where they’d talked about their
families, their ambitions, their mutual passions—work,
Russian literature, 1980s rock music, running. Admittedly,
running was a very new passion for Sadie—she’d better warn
Meg not to look too surprised.
Afterward, Daniel had brought her home and here in this
very hallway had taken her in his arms. Then...the kiss.
Remembering, Sadie felt a warm glow inside.
Daniel had pulled away after a minute or so, looked into
her eyes and said, “Hmm.”
Which she took to be a male version of wow. “Hmm,” she’d
said happily back.
“How was your day?” Sadie asked as she led the way to the
kitchen.
“Full-on. Our free diabetes testing was a crowd-puller.
The few spare minutes I had were spent preparing for my
meeting with the SeedTech panel tomorrow.” Daniel ran a
medical clinic for low-income families in Memphis’s
Northside neighborhoods. His interest in childhood nutrition
had brought him to SeedTech, the botanical research firm
where Sadie worked. Sick of always being “the ambulance at
the bottom of this cliff,” he’d joined the panel that
reviewed SeedTech’s research into medicinal plants, projects
that in the long term would benefit poor people everywhere.
Sadie had met him a few weeks ago when she presented her
project to the panel.
“Mm, dinner smells superb.” Daniel lifted the lid of the
casserole dish on the stove and peeked inside. “Not just a
pretty face and an impressive brain, she can cook, too.”
His grin made her heart flip. She would have loved him if
he’d been ugly as sin, but his warm brown eyes and
slightly-too-long hair – he worked so hard, he seldom found
time to get a cut – were adorable.
He accepted a wineglass from her and clinked it against
hers. “Here’s to you.”
To us. Sadie sipped her wine and smiled.
“Um...hi.” Meg spoke from the doorway.
Sadie beamed. “Meg, meet Daniel. Daniel, this is my best
friend Meg Kincaid.” She couldn’t have said who she was
prouder of. Please let them like each other.
Daniel drank in Meg’s silky dark hair, her long lashes,
porcelain-perfect complexion, her sweet smile...his jaw dropped.
Uh, maybe not quite that much.
The natural pink of Meg’s cheeks deepened, her smile
turned irresistible.
Too late.
How ironic that the first fault Sadie should find in
Daniel was his rapid amnesia about that great kiss they’d
shared. From the second he met Meg, his manner toward Sadie
was no more than platonic. Warmly platonic, sure.... In a
matter of a few days, Daniel and Meg were an item. Every
time she saw him with Meg—and since they were at great pains
not to exclude her, that was often—her heart cracked a
little further. What she felt for him, what she thought
they’d both felt, radiated in his face whenever he looked at
Meg.
She should refuse their invitations, but she found
herself drawn to their relationship like a bug to a Venus
flytrap.
“Things still going well with Daniel?” she asked Meg one
Saturday afternoon, as they wandered through a boutique on
Beale Street in search of gifts for Meg’s mom’s sixtieth
birthday. The party was only a week away.
“Wonderful.” Meg held up a funky leather belt. “How about
this?”
“Not sure if that would actually meet around your mom’s
middle. So...you’ve been seeing each other, what, three
weeks?” Three weeks, three days and eighteen hours by
Sadie’s count.
Overhead, the Muzak played Hopelessly Devoted to You.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Meg said.
Sadie’s heart thudded. She’d been so careful to hide her
feelings. “What?”
“That I always say things are wonderful at this stage.
And I’ll change my tune soon.”
Sadie let out a breath of relief. Meg was infamous for
her intense but brief relationships. Sadie couldn’t remember
the last time one of her boyfriends had survived more than
six weeks. If Meg followed her usual pattern, Sadie just had
to hold out another two and a half weeks, max.
Feeling guilty for even thinking that way, she held up a
silk floral-patterned scarf. “Your mom would like this. It’s
pricey, though.”
“I didn’t send anything for Mother’s Day, so it needs to
be good.” Meg took the other end of the scarf and spread the
fabric. “Mom loves roses, I’ll take it.”
As they headed for the line at the cashier, Meg asked,
“How did you know Daniel and I would be right for each other?”
“I didn’t.” Had Meg ever used the words “right for each
other” before? Sadie shivered in the air-conditioned store.
“Then you’re a natural-born genius.” Meg fluttered her
eyelashes at a male clerk, who beckoned them to another cash
register without a line. “Of course, we all know that.” She
dropped the scarf on the counter. “Daniel says you’re the
smartest woman he’s ever met.” No envy, just awe of Daniel’s
every word. “We owe you big-time.”
“Don’t mention it,” Sadie said with wasted irony.
The Muzak segued into Breaking Up is Hard to Do. A timely
reminder to call her mom, who still thought Sadie was
bringing a man to the party. She would phone home tonight
and say she’d broken up with her doctor friend.
As if they were on the same wavelength, rather than
different emotional planets, Meg said, “Guess what? I
invited Daniel home this weekend, and he said yes!”
A knife twisted behind Sadie’s ribs as she pinned on her
widest smile. “Of course he did.”
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