Book Review: The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce
The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce
Content Warnings:
TW: parental abandonment, divorce, pregnancy, anxiety, depression and sexual content. Readers 18+.
Publishing Date: July 16th, 2024
Publisher: Penguin/Berkley
Genres: Adult // Romance, Contemporary
Quick Thoughts: Deeply romantic, achingly raw, and steeped in found family joy. I fell in love so hard throughout the mayhem of the wedding and sparks of reignited love. I left it with happy tears in my eyes, and I know Jessica Joyce has another fan for life.
Rating:
Exes Reunited
Best Friend’s Wedding
Second Chance Love
Finding Yourself
Estranged exes must stick close together to save their best friend’s wedding after a string of disasters in this swoony and steamy second-chance romance.
Georgia Woodward lives by her lists, none more so than the one about her ex, Eli Mora. It’s full of the ironclad dos and don’ts they’ve been following since she returned to the Bay Area after their cataclysmic breakup five years ago.
With the wedding of their mutual best friend, Adam, looming, and them about to step into their roles as best woman and man, Georgia’s never needed it more. She refuses to threaten their tight-knit friend group with her messy—and still very present—feelings. The rules on that list will keep her cool, calm, and compartmentalized.
What’s not on her list? Eli arriving from New York with a new rule-breaking attitude or the all-inclusive venue burning to the ground, leaving the bride and groom in dire straits. Nor does she anticipate Adam asking her and Eli to help him make a miracle happen. Together.
As Georgia and Eli rush up to Napa Valley to pull off the perfect wedding, their old chemistry comes back in technicolor. Somewhere between cake tastings gone wrong, disastrous DJ auditions, and Eli’s heated attention, Georgia starts recognizing the man she fell in love with before. And if she lets herself break her rules, she might find what they’re building isn’t the something old that ruined them—it’s a chance at something new.
My Review
I was looking for the perfect book to take with me on my trip to Sicily to celebrate my 30th birthday, and all roads pointed to The Ex Vows. I’d recently picked it up in The Works because I’d heard so many amazing things about Jessica’s books, and although I always love to start with the first book in an author’s work, this one called to me—and I think it was some kind of fate, because it ended up being exactly not only what I wanted, but needed. We meet Georgia, Eli and Adam in the beginning, these friends that all came into each other’s lives at pivotal moments over the years, Georgia and Adam first, and then Eli later. As they grew up, Georgia and Eli’s friendship blossomed into something more. But after becoming something incredible, even moving in together, somewhere along the way it went wrong, and for the last five years, they’ve grown into strangers.
Their best friend Adam, though, is getting married. As his Best Woman, Georgia knows this means she’s going to see Eli, the Best Man, a little more than usual (hardly ever, only at family/friend events) but she’s not expecting this outcome: taking on the task of getting the wedding back on track when it goes from one disaster to another, alongside ex Eli. They team up at the destination, Blue Yonder, a winery they’d infrequently work when they were teens, where it’s all-hands on deck. No one can deny they work well together, not even themselves. But they butt heads on decisions and allocated tasks, not before their bitter reunion sweetens at flickers from their good times, shared memories and way they still, to this day, know one another better than anyone else. It’s how they strike up a just-for-now deal of late-night kisses and days spent in each other’s beds. Georgia begins to see the Eli before they all went wrong, and tough conversations between finding a Wedding Cake baker and DJ lead them to see a sunset on the horizon of a new future they could have together. Only, Georgia is terrified of getting her heart broken again—but gone is the Eli who did it, and does that mean they have a chance this time?
The Ex Vows is one of the best second chance romances I’ve ever read—one of the best romance books I’ve ever come across. Deeply romantic, achingly raw, and steeped in found family joy, my time with it flew by during poolside reading and late-night chapters, and I fell in love with it with every page turned. The friendships in this story is where the depth and love really shines it’s utter brightest, this sort of connection that was forged out of loss, divorces and parental vacancies, and became something that transcended throughout different cities, homes and stages of life. I loved how Jessica wrote in the anxiety around adult friendships changing shape as we grow and the struggle of feeling lost of where you fit in someone’s evolving life, especially as Adam gets married and Georgia prepares to move for her job, whilst Eli wavers between stages. The whole time I was reading I just didn’t want it to end. I fell in love so hard throughout the mayhem of the wedding and sparks of reignited love. I left it with happy tears in my eyes, and I know Jessica Joyce has another fan for life. I cannot wait to read You, With a View soon!
Rating
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