Review: The Best Man by Kristan Higgins #Romance

Title: The Best Man

Author: Kristan Higgins
Rating: 4 stars

This is the second book I've read by Kristan Higgins. The first was actually the third book in this series. I liked it enough to seek out the first two books and see what I'd missed and I'm glad I did.

The Best Man is a sweet, if unlikely romance, between two people who grew up on opposite sides of the tracks.

Right off the bat I have to say that I liked Faith and Levi. They got off to a rocky start in the book and this was definitely an 'opposites attract' type of story. Faith had what, on the surface, seemed like a fairly cushy childhood. The only exception to that was the death of her mother when she was twelve. Levi, on the other hand, grew up in a single parent home in the town trailer park worlds away from Faith's nice house up on the hill.

I enjoyed the progression of the relationship as well. The author didn't rush anything. She let things build and grow at a natural pace. Even the inevitable separation that occurred toward the end of the book was believable. Ms. Higgins did a nice job with the characters back stories to have what happened make sense.

There were two negatives in this book for me, which took away from the romance. At times I felt the extra stuff going on with the secondary characters drew focus away from the couple. I get that some of it was done to set up for future books, but I still thought it was a bit much. There was a lot of bickering by Faith's grandparents. I thought some of that could have been shaved off, as well as some of the interactions she had with her ex, Jeremy. The other issue, which wasn't really the author's fault, is that I found edits within the book. I don't mean things that should have been edited. I'm talking about actual words that had lines through them and should have been taken out before the novel went to print. 

While I'm hoping that at least the second issue I had in the first book does not carry over into the second of the series, I have already begun reading book number two, The Perfect Match.

Even still, I enjoyed this book and will probably check out more of this author's work. There were a few editing issues, however they didn't take away from my overall enjoyment of the story. 

I recommend this story for those who like sweet romances with lots of family drama.

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Author Bio

Kristan Higgins is the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, USA TODAY and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of more than a dozen novels and a two-time winner of the Romance Writers of America RITA Award. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages and received numerous starred reviews fromPublishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal,Kirkus and Romantic Times. She is a four-time nominee for The Kirkus Prize for best work of fiction.

Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, National Public Radio,Library Journal, iBooks and Amazon have named Kristan's books to their best books of the year numerous times. The author is a popular speaker at schools, writers conferences, bookstores and book festivals.

Before she was a writer, Kristan worked in advertising and public relations. She waited tables and nannied while in high school and college, cleaned houses as a young mother, and is the proud descendant of a laundress and a butcher.

The author loves animals, children (even teenagers), the New York Yankees and dessert.

Along with her heroic and tolerant firefighter husband and two snarky and entertaining children, Kristan lives in her hometown in Connecticut.

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