The Proposal (The Wedding Date #2) by Jasmine Guillory

 The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory is the second in the wildly successful The Wedding Date series, which currently has six books in it. I've been reading them all out of order and I think that might be part of the reason I have such meh feelings about them, but here are my thoughts on this one.

Nik is at a ball game with her current boyfriend when he unexpectedly proposes to her on the Jumbotron. When she says no, she becomes incredibly unpopular in the stadium and Carlos and his sister Angie save her from the swarms of people in a pretty sweet meet-cute.  Carlos and Nik eventually become involved, but they had agreed to keep it casual and suddenly they're meeting each other's family and friends and it's not casual anymore.

Interesting characters: I think these two have the potential to be interesting characters. Unfortunately, what Guillory does is keep things light and fluffy by never actually dwelling into the backstories.  Nik has some past issues regarding a previous relationship, but we never actually find out much about this relationship besides some vague handwaving in conversations with her friends. I absolutely don't need to be spoon fed what happened, but because it was all so vague, it just didn't feel like I understood what her deal was. And as for Carlos? He seems like a good guy with some completely normal daddy issues.  Interesting? Not really.

Believable conflict: Because I don't understand the psyches of the characters, the conflict seemed incredibly artificial. Yes, maybe Carlos was quicker for their relationship to move on beyond casual than Nik was, but I wasn't sure why she overreacted.  I mean, Carlos' reaction was believable because if someone went off the deep end like that with me, I'd for sure step away quite quickly, but Nik's reaction was so puzzling.  Just not clear as to what was even happening.

Emotional tension: Because the conflict was so artificial, I didn't really care if they got together or not, to be honest.  Nik is obviously not mature enough for a relationship and Carlos deserves someone better.

Happily ever after: Well, they're together at the end. I'll leave it to you to decide if that's a true happily ever after.

Guillory's tendency toward fluffy writing is the problem here. I want to like these books - I like that romancelandia has started to have a more diverse set of authors and characters.  However, Guillory doesn't really even deal with the perils of interracial dating here (Nik is black and Carlos is Latino) and they don't even really have any discussions about it outside of a brief "you didn't tell me your friend was dating a black woman and you didn't tell them I was black" comment that was quickly followed up by a distracting kiss.  I think it would have been worth it for Guillory to force these characters to have a conversation about race and what each other's expectations are (do you tell your parents the person is another race ahead of time? how comfortable are you in spaces dominated by others of a different race?).

On one hand, I can understand why Guillory wants her characters to just be regular old romance novel characters who generally don't have discussions about race. We read our romance novels for escapism and throwing in a conversation about racial divisions is not really going to do that. On the other hand, why bother having diverse characters if they literally face the exact same conundrums as the regular old romance novels of years past? Diverse characters presumably means new situations, new conversations, and new messages to readers, but that's not what we get from The Wedding Date series.

Guillory is eminently (anyone else have to look up the difference between imminent and eminent all the time?) readable and the opening scene was absolutely mesmerizing and pulled me in. The stadium scene felt so real and it was a great set-up. I can imagine adding it to my list of favorite book scenes (the carwash scene from Just Listen? the scene in The Order of the Phoenix when Neville saves the gum wrapper? the scene in The Secret Garden when Colin stands up?*), but the rest of the book just didn't live up to the brilliance of the first chapter.

I'm reading my way through a list of "best romance books" and I have two more Guillory novels to read, but don't be mad if I have the same criticisms over and over again. I want to like these books, but I find them just so disappointing.  Give me more Talia Hibbert and I will stop complaining, I promise!

*The parenthetical is entirely plagiarized from a post from 2012.