Tracy’s review of Bouquet Toss by Melissa Brown

Warning: This review contains major spoilers

Ever since Daphne Harper graduated from college, all of her friends have fallen in love, become engaged and walked down the aisle. Be it a blessing or a curse, Daphne (a hopeless romantic and perpetual single girl) catches the bouquet at every single wedding she attends.

Daphne’s love life is a mess. Her first love, Mayson, haunts her heart and keeps her from pursuing happiness with any man who comes along. As she struggles to move on from the one who got away, Daphne wonders if she will ever break her curse and find her happily ever after.

Daphne is single. She doesn’t necessarily want to be single, but she is. One of the reasons she’s single is because she had a boyfriend in college and even though he ended up breaking her heart she still compares everyone to him. It’s been 5 years since she’s seen her ex but yet when she spots him at her best friends’ wedding she can’t help but be drawn to him. Mayson lives in Denver, not in the Chicago area, so dating is hard but Mayson and Daphne start up anyway and Daphne finds herself falling hard, once again, for this man. Mayson says that he loves her but Daphne, though she knows she loves him, just can’t seem to say the words – something is holding her back. When Mayson disappears and doesn’t text or call Daphne thinks it’s over. She then gets a phone call from Mayson’s mother stating that Mayson’s been in an accident and his survival outlook is grim. Daphne heads to Denver and meets not only Mayson’s mother, Cece, but also his girlfriend, Brynn. Yep, Mayson was a two timin’ bastard. Daphne is crushed but she makes the most of the time she can spend with Mayson, even though he’s in a coma.

After Mayson dies Daphne’s not sure what to do. Mayson’s mother and Daphne strike up a friendship and have a comfortable bond between them. Cece gives an engagement ring to Daphne that she feels that Mayson was planning on giving to Daphne (not Brynn) and Daphne’s confused as all get out. She takes the ring rather than leave it with Cece and goes back to her life.

After months of mourning Daphne’s friends get her to start going out and join the land of the living again and they actually sign her up for online dating – which ends up being a nightmare. She does meet Tanner, a friend of a friend, and they hit it off immediately. In fact they hit it off so well that they each find that they’re falling in love with the other. But when Tanner finds out about lies that Daphne’s told and when he finds out that she’s kept that engagement ring, the relationship hits the skids. How can Daphne deal with it all, exorcise Mayson’s ghost and keep the man she loves?  She’s not sure she can.

I’m going to start my thoughts off with Mayson. He was slimy. I have no idea what Daphne saw in the man as he just seemed like an slick charmer. Even when a chapter or two of the book took us back in time to Daphne’s college days he was just kind of oily and untrustworthy. After Daphne started seeing him again I honestly thought that we would find out that he was married. I was SO surprised when it was “just” a girlfriend. Ha! I can’t say that I’m glad he died but I was definitely happy to have him out of the picture.

Then Tanner came along. He seemed everything that was kind and wonderful and frankly, he was. He put himself all out there and honesty was his best asset. The problem I had with the story was that he just seemed almost too good to be true. I don’t want to seem cynical but it was like the author had to take us to the extreme opposite of Mayson and it was almost too far opposite if that makes any sense at all. That being said I thought he was way too good for Daphne.

I was happy for Daphne that she had finally found a man who loved her and that she could be herself with but for some reason I kept expecting “The One” to come along. I kept expecting the “real” romance to begin as I honestly didn’t see Tanner and Daphne together for the long haul. I guess I was wrong as they got their HEA. After I thought about it for a while I came to the conclusion that I just didn’t care for Daphne all that much. She didn’t seem like an honest person but everyone seemed to like her so much. She was wishy-washy and emotionally unavailable – not just with Tanner but a LOT with Mayson as well. Even though she felt she could be herself with Tanner I never saw that – I always saw her holding back and I didn’t like that at all. I think it all stemmed from the fact that Mayson had actually broken up with her in her sophomore year  – although he did sleep with her right before graduation and then never called (how like him) but Daphne was still hung up on him all those years later.  IDK I just thought that she should have been mature enough to move on by the time the book started.

After reading about the characters I guess it sounds like I didn’t like the book all that much but I really did. It was good, I just had some issues with it. Though I wasn’t a huge fan of either of the romances I very much like the writing (although I could have done without the 1st person POV, that’s for sure) and the secondary characters were awesome. In fact when Daphne’s friend Evan came into the picture he was the one that I wanted her with. Of course by the end of the book I was quite happy that they weren’t cuz I ended up liking Evan a whole hell of a lot better than Daphne. (Oops.) I’m hoping the next book will be about Evan because that I would love to read.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

You can read more from Tracy at Tracy’s Place

This book is available from Melissa Brown. You can buy it here in e-format. This book was provided by the author for an honest review.