MY EX-HUSBAND'S EX-HUSBAND, clever, witty novel about something I bet has already happened

MY EX-HUSBAND'S EX-HUSBAND
RACHEL COHN & MELISSA de la CRUZ
Little A (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From New York Times bestselling authors Rachel Cohn and Melissa de la Cruz comes a freewheeling journey through Vienna where two estranged friends search for their mutual ex—and a long-lost bond.

Audrey and Ian were best friends—until they fell in love with the same man. To be precise, they fell in love with, married, and divorced the same man. And there’s no coming back from that.

Twenty-odd years later, they’re right back at the beginning: Vienna, where their university study abroad turned into a love triangle from which they never quite recovered. But it’s Christmas, and Audrey’s daughter is getting married. Time to let bygones be bygones.

Not for the sake of the holiday or even because they’ve matured with age…but because their mutual ex is nowhere to be found. It’s up to Audrey and Ian to track him down.

As wedding plans go further awry, the former besties race to find the father of the bride. Juggling complicated family dynamics (and the cocktails required to cope), they learn that, sometimes, it’s not about the search but the friendships rediscovered along the way.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A Yuletide wedding has only one thing going for it that I can see: no way to forget the date. Making the wedding itself a destination wedding? In Europe, where you need a passport and a pile of cash to travel? Well, we know already who these folks are hangin' with. Not the likes of my broke-ass self.

But let's go with the fantasy. I love a holiday romantic story. The set-up for this one's irresistible...Ian and Audrey having to solve the problem of their mutual ex-husband, the deeply self-centered borderline narcissist Beau—aptly named thing of beauty and a boy forever—ghosts Izzy (Isadora, as in Duncan) their daughter/stepdaughter on her Christmas wedding day. This is far from the first time he's behaved this thoughtlessly to either of them but they're willing to rally together to keep him from ruining their dear Izzy's slapped-together last-minute dream.

It's a romance, there is no mystery about the Happily Ever After. It's all the banter and shenanigans that make it fun to read.As Audrey and Ian mobilize to get Beau's butt where he said it would be for once, they rekindle their own badly damaged trust in each other. It's that relationship that each of them really missed, really values.

Told in alternating first-person chapters as the hunt for Beau takes the two recovering co-dependent besties from pillar to post and back again, the story sees them heal their fractured lives, their fractured friendship, and their mutual step/daughter's wildly impulsive disaster in the making. Izzy's choice of husband, her younger daughter Max's choice of a life, her testy, curmudgeonly ex-mother-in-law's rudderless aimless bad mood...Audrey's love life and Ian's love life, Beau's jerk personality all fixed as well.

It's a romance, the spoiler would be telling you *how* not *that* it all works out! I was pleased to be along for this goofy ride because, as each corner was turned, I thought "oh sure, that makes sense" exactly never. Instead I was treated to improbable, amusing solutions to the entire crew's problems. Hey, this is a wedding for two young Americans in Vienna, Austria, at the city's busiest time and there's no scheduling conflicts. This is not reality.

But it sure was fun.