Spotlight & Giveaway: The Wedding Ringer by Kerry Rea

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Kerry Rea’s new release: The Wedding Ringer

A woman who wants nothing to do with love or friendship finds both in the unlikeliest ways in this hilarious and heartwarming debut by Kerry Rea.

 
Once upon a time, Willa Callister was a successful blogger with a good credit score, actual hobbies, and legs that she shaved more than once a month. But after finding her fiancé in bed with her best friend, she now spends her days performing at children’s birthday parties in a ball gown that makes her look like a walking bottle of Pepto Bismol. Willa dreams of starting fresh, where no one knows who she used to be, but first she needs to save up enough money to make it happen.

Maisie Mitchell needs something too: another bridesmaid for her wedding. After a chance encounter at a coffee shop, Maisie offers to pay Willa to be in her bridal party. Willa wants nothing to do with weddings—or Maisie—but the money will give her the freedom to start the new life she so badly desires.

Willa’s bridesmaid duties thrust her into Maisie’s high-energy world and into the path of hotshot doctor Liam Rafferty. But as Willa and Maisie form a real friendship, and Liam’s annoyingly irresistible smile makes her reconsider her mantra that all men are trash, Willa’s exit strategy becomes way more complicated. And when a secret from Maisie’s past threatens to derail the wedding, Willa must consider whether friendship—and romance—are worth sticking around for.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from The Wedding Ringer 

I feel the weight of the cake in my hands and have the sudden urge to smash it. Princess Sparkleheart never gets angry, I remind myself again. It’s the mantra I repeat when the parties get overwhelming, or when a child accidentally whacks me in the face during a game of piñata. That happens more often than you’d think.
I struggle not to drop the cake, which weighs about the same as my three-year-old niece, as Beth and I parade back into the yard. Chloe claps her hands in excitement and the other children crowd around us, marveling at the cake and the promise of an impending sugar high. Beth lights the candles one by one as the adults, who have smartly avoided the petting zoo and the gift-opening display in favor of drinking wine indoors, join the outdoor festivities. Chloe’s dad snakes an arm around Beth’s waist, slurring something about the hors d’oeuvres, and I’m surprised when Beth doesn’t light his hair on fire.
“Happy birthday to you,” she sings, and everyone joins in in off-key voices, rushing through the lyrics to get to the cake-eating. My biceps burn with the exertion of holding the cake, and I dream of the moment when I can collect my money from Beth and go home to shower off the glitter and unchecked commercialism and drink myself to sleep.
“Happy birthday, dear Chloe,” the woefully out-of-tune group continues. “Happy birthday to y—”
That’s when I see her. At the outskirts of the assembled group, next to where Chloe’s dad is indiscreetly eyeing a guest half Beth’s age, stands Sarah. She’s scrolling through something on her phone, so her face is turned away from me, but it’s her. I’d know her anywhere. I recognize her outfit: a coral, sweetheart-neckline jumpsuit from Express that we’d picked out together. She thought the color was garish on her pale skin, but I’d convinced her it was just the unflattering fitting room lighting. And I was right. Here, at Chloe Wellington’s sixth birthday party, with a bottle of Perrier in her hand and a slim gold bracelet around her left wrist—the one she broke when we were eight and tried Rollerblading with our eyes closed—Sarah looks pretty.
The shock of seeing her rips through me like a knife through soft, yielding flesh. My stomach lurches as a vision of her and Max together reappears in my mind: their sweaty bodies tangled and moving underneath my plum-colored bedsheets. I shut my eyes as Beth and the children finish the birthday song, their voices flat and ringing in my ears.
When I open my eyes again, fighting back against the memory of Max’s trembling hands pressed against Sarah’s pearly-pink nipples, I see her lips opening and closing, forming the words of the song. I know she’s not really singing, that she’s a terrible singer who lip-synced her way through our fifth-grade choral songbook, just as I know that she hates every single thing about this party, from Chloe’s incessant smirking to the monogrammed cloth napkins. I know all this because I know her, or at least I used to. I used to think I knew both of them.
It’s only when the group finishes the song with one last, tuneless note and a hearty cheer that Sarah glances up from her phone. Her gaze sweeps past the pony rides and the bounce house and the overloaded charcuterie table and lands, finally, on me. Her mouth drops open, and I notice her face is less round than it used to be. Maybe her boss at the law firm has her working eighty-hour weeks again, or maybe her on-off relationship with Pure Barre is back on. Or perhaps, in the five months since we last saw each other, since the day I swore to never speak of her again, I’d forgotten what my best friend looked like.
Sarah’s face wrinkles with confusion. I imagine how I look from her perspective, with my ridiculous ball gown and too-tight heels and my flower crown wilting in the July heat. I fight the urge to vomit.
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Her nervous tic. “Willa,” she says. Her voice is soft, hesitant, the way one might speak to a dog baring its teeth.
And then it happens. My fingers go slack as my body’s fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. I try to hold on to the cake and the last of my sanity, but I don’t stand a chance.
“No!” Beth screams as I drop Chloe’s sugar castle and it splatters on the ground. A turret pops off and rolls into the grass, and the chocolate drawbridge crumbles. Chloe shrieks as the tiny cookie version of herself gets buried beneath layers of smushed icing, and an opportunist pony who’s trotted over from the petting zoo bends toward the collapsed cake and takes a swift, gigantic bite.
“What the hell?” Beth still grips a lighter in one hand, and I step back as she thrusts it in my direction. “What have you done?”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. My head is suddenly pounding, and my body feels lighter than air, as if I could float away at any moment. Beth’s face is as red as the merlot mentioned on her shirt, her lips curled into an alarming snarl, but all I see is Sarah’s head thrown back in ecstasy as Max thrusts into her, her head slamming the headboard with each wave of motion. All I see is the shock on her face as I drop my purse in the entryway of my bedroom, Max still thrusting, not yet noticing my presence. “I’m so sorry.”
“That cake cost three times what I’m paying you.” Beth’s hands clutch her chest, and I back away in case she decides to grab my throat instead. “Three times.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat as the pony chomps merrily on the remaining clumps of cake and icing. I bend toward the ground to see if I can salvage any of it, and the pony licks a bit of glitter off my head.
“Get up,” Beth demands as a sobbing Chloe is surrounded by a circle of concerned friends.
I do as instructed, pressing my fingernails so roughly against my palms that I draw blood. “I’m so sorry, Beth. I can run to Costco and get a sheet cake—”
“Costco?” Beth presses her face so close to mine that I think she might spit on me. “Cut the bullshit. I only hired you because our Elsa impersonator came down with the flu, and look what happened.” She motions to the cake, where another industrious pony has joined the first in licking frosting off the grass. “You’ve ruined Chloe’s party.”
Princess Sparkleheart never gets angry, the better angels of my nature remind me. It’s more a desperate prayer than a mantra. Princess Sparkleheart never gets—
“Willa,” Sarah calls. “Willa!” She crosses the yard toward me in swift steps, weaving through the crowd of children weeping over the decimated cake.
“Just leave,” Beth orders.
I’ve never wanted to disappear as much as I do now. My skin itching from my dress and the sting of humiliation, I grab my golden throne and wood flute and head for the street. One of my heels comes off in my haste, but I press on, leaving the shoe and a crowd of crying children in my wake.
“Willa!” Sarah’s running as fast as her jumpsuit will allow, which isn’t very fast at all, and I’d laugh if my whole world weren’t such a shitshow. “Just talk to me for a minute. Please.”
I grip my wood flute so tightly I think it might snap. If it weren’t for what Sarah did, I’d still be Willa Callister, popular Columbus blogger and functional human being. I’d live in my charming Short North town house instead of my sister’s spare bedroom. I’d spend Friday nights with other late-twenty-somethings instead of marathoning The Golden Girls and fantasizing that I was the girls’ fifth roommate.
If it weren’t for what Sarah did, we’d still be Sarah and Willa. I’d still be me. But we aren’t, and I’m not.
“Willa, please,” she says. She’s a sea of coral coming at me, and I quicken my pace. “Please.”
It’s the third please that pushes me over the edge. I fling my throne into the grass, hard, causing one of the flimsy legs to snap off. Sarah winces as if I’ve struck her.
“My name,” I say, gritting my teeth, “is Princess Sparkleheart.”
“Get out!” Beth screeches.
When I bend down to pick up the throne and its dismembered leg, I hear a burst of throaty laughter behind me. The noise prickles my skin and makes my stomach contort. What kind of monster could possibly find my humiliation funny? Enraged, I whip my head up to see a dark-haired man nearly doubled over in laughter next to Beth’s white picket fence. He clutches a beer in one hand, and I can hardly stop myself from grabbing the bottle and dumping its contents over his head.
When his laughter dies down enough that he can breathe properly, the man straightens up and takes a long, deep inhale. He has handsome features, with brown eyes and a jawline that a younger Princess Sparkleheart might have described as panty-dropping. He looks clean-cut in slacks and a blue oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms.
Fury pulses through my veins, and the better angel of my nature abandons ship.
“Something funny?” I ask Mr. Asshole, clutching the broken leg of the throne like I might shank someone with it. It takes a second for me to realize that I probably look like a deranged ’80s prom queen, and I let the chair leg fall to the grass.
Surprise flashes across the man’s face when he realizes I’ve been watching him.
“No,” he answers, but the sound comes out as a choked laugh. He coughs and pounds a fist against his chest. “No, sorry. I’m not—I’m not laughing at you. It’s just . . . I choked on my drink.” He hoists his beer up as evidence, revealing a Roman-numeral tattoo on his right wrist, and tries to subtly wipe away a tear trailing down his cheek.
“You’re an asshole,” I say, my voice trembling. “And a bad liar.”
I hoist my poufy skirt up toward my knees and hobble one-shoed toward my car, leaving Mr. Asshole and Sarah and any remaining shreds of my dignity behind.
My chest heaving with the work of fighting back tears, I scramble for my car keys. I unlock my slightly dented Toyota Corolla with trembling hands and scurry into the safe cocoon of my car, slamming the door shut behind me. My tulle skirt gets stuck in the door, but I fire up the engine regardless, desperate for escape.
“Willa!” Sarah emerges from the backyard, clutching my abandoned shoe. She waves the high heel around wildly, and I half expect her to chuck it at my car to get me to stop. “Wait!”
I slam my foot against the gas pedal and peel away from the curb, nearly destroying an innocent patch of purple hydrangeas in the process. The neat, tree-lined streets and matching gray mailboxes of Beth’s neighborhood whiz by me, and a visor-sporting woman in a minivan blasts her horn as I pass. The only thing that stops me from pulling over and dissolving into sobs is the knowledge that my bed and a bottle of wine await me at home.
They, at least, make everything better. Because Princess Sparkleheart might never get angry, but she sure as hell gets buzzed.

Excerpt. ©Kerry Rea. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: One Print copy of The Wedding Ringer by Kerry Rea U. S. only 

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Meet the Author:

Kerry Rea lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and their small army of dogs. She grew up in Youngstown, Ohio and graduated from The University of Notre Dame. She believes that a happy ending is always possible. Visit her at authorkerryrea.com and on Instagram at @authorkerryrea, and on Twitter at @kerrymrea.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/666080/the-wedding-ringer-by-kerry-rea/