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A review by jessicareadsit
Bad Luck Bridesmaid by Alison Rose Greenberg
4.0
Zoey Marks is a career-obsessed woman with a mission to chart her course regardless of the naysayers. As a fellow marketing professional, I loved her zeal for connecting brands with experiences and could relate to how the antiquated views and opinions of stuffy male-dominated management can stifle creativity.
I salute the author for penning such a highly relatable character. Zoey isn't just challenging the status quo of women in the workplace, but also their role in society. Too often romance novels pen marriage as the ideal, the end goal, the be-all of a woman's life, and I cannot tell you how satisfying it was to read about a woman who wanted love but not marriage. The author forces readers to ask the question, "Why must marriage be the ultimate form of commitment?"
I was impressed with how the author describes the union of marriage, not so much as a prison but as giving of a part of yourself over to another person. There is a vulnerability in giving someone the power to hurt you and we need to normalize the fears and anxieties associated with this.
What's really powerful about Bad Luck Bridesmaid is the fact that Zoey isn't just a character in a book, she's given a voice to the insecurities plaguing some women, "When the world tells you you're difficult, at some point, a little voice creeps inside and you start to ask yourself, Am I the mountain? Am I the very thing standing in my own way? Am I good enough"
Bad Luck Bridesmaid not only contained powerful lessons on female empowerment, independence, and love but featured some stellar characters. While I admit the beginning was slightly slow, once it picked up I laughed at Zoey's quirky dialogue and her impossibly hilarious life situations. I liked the different iterations of love- love at first sight, love lost and heartache, familial love, love of a lifetime, and love that burns you from the inside out.
Zoey Marks gave me everything I want to see from my female MCs in the romance genre for 2022 and I was 100% here for it! Here are the top things I have learned from Zoey when reading Bad Luck Bridesmaid:
- There is nothing wrong with jumping headfirst into your career or life if it ignites your soul, as Zoey says, "I do not need fixing, there is nothing wrong with a badass woman who didn't believe in mapping out her future."
- Embrace your individuality, don't ever let someone else control your fate, "There was comfort in knowing that by coloring outside the lines, I was in control of where I wanted my pen, and it was not where someone else told me to put it."
- Normalizing the fact that not all women want to get married, " want to wake up every day and make a decision to love you, without something wrapped around my finger telling me I'm supposed to..."
- You can be in love and not want marriage- Marriage was simply not for me, I wanted love, but I wanted choices."
- Your relationship with your parents as a child can affect your adult relationships. "The belief that everything bad surrounding me was my fault was a childhood trait"
- Love does not always make sense, "I don't want him back....I just- I don't want him to be happy with anybody else. And I want his body, like....all over my body"
- Chart your course and screw the world's perception of you, "How do you move forward with your head held high when the world tells you you're not living up to your potential as a woman?"
- It's ok to break a relationship even if you're engaged if your heart and soul aren't into it
Thank you to St. Martin's Griffin for providing me with an arc. All thoughts and opinions are my own
I salute the author for penning such a highly relatable character. Zoey isn't just challenging the status quo of women in the workplace, but also their role in society. Too often romance novels pen marriage as the ideal, the end goal, the be-all of a woman's life, and I cannot tell you how satisfying it was to read about a woman who wanted love but not marriage. The author forces readers to ask the question, "Why must marriage be the ultimate form of commitment?"
I was impressed with how the author describes the union of marriage, not so much as a prison but as giving of a part of yourself over to another person. There is a vulnerability in giving someone the power to hurt you and we need to normalize the fears and anxieties associated with this.
What's really powerful about Bad Luck Bridesmaid is the fact that Zoey isn't just a character in a book, she's given a voice to the insecurities plaguing some women, "When the world tells you you're difficult, at some point, a little voice creeps inside and you start to ask yourself, Am I the mountain? Am I the very thing standing in my own way? Am I good enough"
Bad Luck Bridesmaid not only contained powerful lessons on female empowerment, independence, and love but featured some stellar characters. While I admit the beginning was slightly slow, once it picked up I laughed at Zoey's quirky dialogue and her impossibly hilarious life situations. I liked the different iterations of love- love at first sight, love lost and heartache, familial love, love of a lifetime, and love that burns you from the inside out.
Zoey Marks gave me everything I want to see from my female MCs in the romance genre for 2022 and I was 100% here for it! Here are the top things I have learned from Zoey when reading Bad Luck Bridesmaid:
- There is nothing wrong with jumping headfirst into your career or life if it ignites your soul, as Zoey says, "I do not need fixing, there is nothing wrong with a badass woman who didn't believe in mapping out her future."
- Embrace your individuality, don't ever let someone else control your fate, "There was comfort in knowing that by coloring outside the lines, I was in control of where I wanted my pen, and it was not where someone else told me to put it."
- Normalizing the fact that not all women want to get married, " want to wake up every day and make a decision to love you, without something wrapped around my finger telling me I'm supposed to..."
- You can be in love and not want marriage- Marriage was simply not for me, I wanted love, but I wanted choices."
- Your relationship with your parents as a child can affect your adult relationships. "The belief that everything bad surrounding me was my fault was a childhood trait"
- Love does not always make sense, "I don't want him back....I just- I don't want him to be happy with anybody else. And I want his body, like....all over my body"
- Chart your course and screw the world's perception of you, "How do you move forward with your head held high when the world tells you you're not living up to your potential as a woman?"
- It's ok to break a relationship even if you're engaged if your heart and soul aren't into it
Thank you to St. Martin's Griffin for providing me with an arc. All thoughts and opinions are my own