Review: Best Friends + Fake Engagement = A Great Read
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 15, 2012
Josh and Melanie have been the best of friends for 10 years. As this story opens, they are roommates who deal with their boredom in a pretty juvenile way--spending a couple of hours hanging out at the local superstore. Josh is just being silly when he makes his fake proposal, and when someone's cell phone video of the event goes viral, they are suddenly preparing to have a very real wedding with television network and superstore sponsors. While the scenario is pretty implausible, it works in the way that such scenarios can for romantic-comedies of both the written and film variety.Virginia Jewel's writing is light and humorous. She gives her characters realistic dialogue and emotions (even if the events aren't quite realistic). While the fake engagement story is not a new plot-line, Jewel keeps it fresh by interspersing the current events with flashbacks that show previous events in Josh and Mel's friendships. I enjoyed the flashbacks and the insights they give in to the characters, especially Josh.Another of the things that I thinks works really well for this story is that Jewel has the characters interacting with their other friends quite a bit. While too many characters can sometimes detract from a story, these friends help us to really see how Josh and Mel's friendship has shaped up over the past ten years.In the fake engagement/best friend stories, it seems that there is always one character who has felt unrequited loved the other for quite some time. This is true of this story, as well, but it's done in such a way as to prevent the story from being overly predictable. I thought it was cute and funny and quite enjoyable.