Product Description
Kieran Quinn is a Texas native transplanted to Manhattan who is working as a columnist for a national magazine. He’s famous for his snarky, sardonic columns, but deep down he’s more interested in what makes people tick than his editor would like. He keeps his desire to find his own Mr. Right hidden under a sexy, carefree persona that favors champagne and underwear models of the male variety. Jaxon Lang is the handsome, confident high school principal in a tin… More >>
#1 by M. Nix on May 1, 2010 - 7:08 pm
Kieran Quinn enjoys life as a snippy, sarcastic and irreverent columnist for chic magazine Gloss. Yet, after writing his last piece with a less than sarcastic slant and getting it turned around by his editor, Kieran begins to feel the inklings of dissatisfaction with his job. However, this job is comfortable and Kieran gets paid really well for the privilege. So, while hunting for material for his next column Kiernan stumbles across a real-life version of the “Run Away Bride” and decides that this just might be the type of story to bring him back to his sarcastic and irreverent best. However, Kieran didn’t count on the effect Jaxon, the prospective groom, would have on him or the secrets that he would uncover while researching the bride’s past wedding failures…
Sex, Lies and Wedding Bells is a long tale about honesty, love and growing up. Kieran is your typical conceited gay man that only has time for superficial encounters that end before the sun rises, while Jaxon is a man of earnest emotion that while content with his life nonetheless feels trapped by the path his life has taken. Most of the book of is spent investigating the bride’s suspicious past and dancing around the undercurrents of attraction between Kieran and Jaxon, the supposed straight groom. Also, the plot, as a whole, was rather simplistic and boilerplate with few surprises and full of two dimensional characters. The “climax” of the story was also rather rushed and almost unnoticeable amidst of the blossoming “relationship” between Kieran and Jaxon leaving the remaining of the book feeling either unnecessary when related to what had gone before or becoming the real action in the predictable romance plot. Sex, Lies and Wedding Bells is an unoriginal romance, but if you don’t mind the lack of surprise in the plot or outcome it can serve as entertainment on a long day.
Sabella
Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed
Rating: 4 / 5
#2 by R. Payne on May 1, 2010 - 8:31 pm
This was somewhat predictable and was not as interesting as I thought it would be.
Rating: 3 / 5
#3 by Charly T. Anchor on May 1, 2010 - 9:27 pm
Warning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS.
Rating: 6/10
PROS:
- There’s more intrigue to the story than I expected. I thought it would be a pretty simple “soul mates meet but one of them thinks he’s straight” sort of story with very little plot other than Kieran’s quest to convince Jaxon that they’re meant to be together. But there’s an interesting additional element in the mystery surrounding Danetta, Jaxon’s fiancée.
- When the characters start a sexual relationship, Jaxon’s simultaneous hesitancy and eagerness are endearing.
- Most of the depictions of small-town Texas life are well portrayed and accurate.
- The resolution of the story is very sweet. Each character makes a grand gesture to prove to the other that he’s in love, and the ending that results is fairy-taleish and cute.
CONS:
- Lynley tells a pretty good story, and on the whole s/he’s a decent writer, but on occasion the writing is unnecessarily redundant. Example: “Tom had fair skin and grey-green eyes, but was far less beautiful than Jaxon. Danetta certainly had a thing for fair-skinned men with green eyes, though Tom didn’t have anything on Jaxon.” Those two sentences are back-to-back.
- The POV is pretty consistently from Kieran’s perspective (with a few little slip-ups here and there from Jaxon’s). But then 200 pages in, we get our first chapter from Jaxon’s POV. It knocked me off kilter a little bit when I had been wishing I could read Jaxon’s thoughts about the whole situation for the entirety of the book and then suddenly got to see them when I had assumed the entire story would focus on Kieran’s experiences.
- The quality of the production isn’t great. There are quite a few typos and editing issues, but most people can overlook those. Repeating entire lines of text (or in one instance, an entire paragraph) and not indenting any of the numerous paragraphs on one page…harder to ignore.
Overall comments: The plot isn’t central to this story–the romance is–but the plot’s not too bad. There’s more going on here than in most books that are pure romances rather than romantic mysteries or romantic action stories. There’s not a lot of sex, and what’s there isn’t very graphic, so the emotional attachment is definitely the focus.
Rating: 3 / 5
#4 by B. D. Whitney on May 1, 2010 - 9:40 pm
Kieran Quinn is a columnist for a slick New York literary weekly who makes a good living writing catty and condescending articles that amuse his sophisticated readers. He lives a self-indulgent lifestyle, picking up male models in bars for one-night stands, sleeping late, keeping his own schedule, but he is actually pretty lonely and would like to have a real relationship for a change. His latest assignment is sending him to the tiny town of Buckwheat in his native Texas to write an article about a “runaway bride” – a woman who has left three men at the alter already and who is now planning to tie the knot for the fourth time. Kieran’s assignment: find out what is going on and what makes groom number four different from all the others.
Groom number four is Jaxon Lang, the principal of the local high school. When Kieran first sees Jaxon, he is floored – this is without a doubt the most beautiful man Kieran has ever met. However, while Kieran is strongly attracted to him, Jaxon is completely in love with his fiancée and is determined that he will not be another groom left at the alter. Over the course of the week before the wedding, the men form a bond of friendship, and it is with dismay that Kieran realizes that he is falling in love with a man who is as straight as Kieran himself is gay. When Kieran uncovers the truth behind the bride’s past behavior, will Jaxon maintain his resolve to get married? And just as important, how will this affect Jaxon’s feelings toward Kieran? Kieran may have yearned for a soul mate in the past, but he had no idea that love could be so unexpected or so complicated.
********
Sex, Lies, and Wedding Bells by E. M. Lynley is a story of love and self-discovery that pairs up two completely disparate individuals: a smart-mouthed gay journalist and an arrow-straight small-town educator. Besides finding completely unexpected love together, these two affect a change in each other: Kieran has his eyes opened to the hurtful potential of the words he writes, and Jaxon realizes that perhaps the gender of the one you love is not as important as who that person is.
This is a well-written story that is populated with interesting and well-developed characters and that contains enough suspense to hook a reader in. Kieran is perhaps not an immediately sympathetic individual, but it is not long before we see that his veneer of self-confident charm hides a sympathetic core. We don’t get to know Jaxon quite as well, but his confusion over his developing attachment to Kieran renders him agreeable. Along with the interpersonal dynamics between these two, we are also drawn in to the by the mystery that surrounds the bride. What is it about her that keeps her exes from feeling ill-will towards her? And when Kieran finds the truth, how much of it will he put into his article for his employer? He’s down in Texas to write a derisive story about the situation, not to try to shield anyone’s feelings.
Watching these two fall in love is incredibly sweet, and when Kieran and Jaxon finally have sex, the scenes are very sensual, and their mutual exploration is tender and caring. There is no doubt that these two are meant for each other and that they deserve a happy ending.
Readers looking for a love story that is not quite traditional but is nevertheless sweet may wish to give Sex, Lies, and Wedding Bells a shot.
Rating: 4 / 5
#5 by Carole Lake on May 1, 2010 - 9:44 pm
Kieran Quinn has the ultimate job at Gloss magazine: he writes funny, snarky columns that are so popular that Gloss, which is something like the New Yorker, won’t even post them on their website so that more people will buy the print magazine. It works, and sales are up. Kieran is Gloss’s fair-haired boy. He’s also quite the gay man about town, with a taste for one-night stands with hunky underwear models, while he’s waiting for real love to find him.
Kieran runs across a possible story in Buckwheat Springs, Texas, of all places, where a bride named Danetta has left three previous bridegrooms at the altar, and has now scheduled yet another wedding. It’s not your typical ‘runaway bride’ story because all her previous fiancés seem to think well of her, wish her well, and even like her newest fiancé Jaxon Lang. How can Danetta ditch all these guys literally at the altar and still have them like her?
So Kieran travels from New York to Buckwheat Springs to write one of his trademark snarky columns, whether or not Danetta actually steps up to the plate (or rather to the altar) this time. Danetta is pretty much what he expected, but Jaxon is not only the most gorgeous man Kieran’s ever seen, but is genuinely a nice guy. It’s too bad that he’s (a)straight and (b)getting married on Saturday.
It’s up to Kieran to solve the mystery of why men are willing to move to Buckwheat Springs and marry Danetta, even with her history of leaving men at the altar. Danetta’s pretty and sweet, but, really, there’s clearly something up here, and Kieran wants to know the truth. His growing attraction to Jaxon is only part of his motivation, though he is spurred on by Jaxon’s reluctant reciprocal feelings.
Can Kieran solve the mystery? Can he save Jaxon from Danetta’s plot? Will the wedding go through? And, even if it doesn’t, what happens then? Is there a future for New York Kieran and Buckwheat Springs Jaxon?
This book is a fast, fun, frothy read. It made me laugh out loud more than once, and brought tears to my eyes a few times, too. The characters are beautifully drawn, and the twisty plot is satisfyingly unpredictable. I stayed up till 2am to finish reading Sex, Lies & Wedding Bells because I wanted to see how on earth EM Lynley was gong to draw all this together, and she does.
Rating: 5 / 5