Review

Being a scientist doesn’t necessarily make you a nerd. In Cassie Barclay’s case it goes together like peanut butter and jelly. She meets gorgeous ex-football player Samuel “Tuck” Tucker at one of her best friend’s wedding (Reese Michael of The Unexpected Wedding Guest). She erroneously and condescendingly thinks he’s just a “dumb jock” and treats him as such .

In response to Cassie’s superior attitude, Tuck plays up to the stereotype—exaggerated Southern drawl included—not letting on that he graduated summa cum laude in pure math and is currently working on a stats app for the NFL. While hitting on Gina—another friend of his cousin Reese—he accepts a small bet that he can get Cassie to dance with him. Never one to turn down a challenge, he accepts it and gets more than he ever bargained for.

The Girl Least Likely to Marry can best be described as Third Rock from the Sun meets The Big Bang Theory.  Cassie is such an over the top character, that’s the best way to describe the book. She’s not just a nerd, she’s part alien as far as I’m concerned. I found it very difficult to relate to her because most of the time, when she wasn’t being infuriatingly arrogant, she wasn’t acting like a human being. The way she spoke, the way she acted, her thoughts, all of it just had me shaking my head wondering if people like this really existed in the world. Which made her come across as more of a caricature than anything else.

I made notes as I was reading and here are some of the things that immediately struck me:

1. The head-hopping was dizzying. At times you were in Cassie’s head then Tuck’s head for about two paragraphs and then back to hers for another paragraph or two then back to his. Memories of Big Girl Panties came back to me and I started really wondering if this head-hopping thing was coming back into vogue. I desperately hope not.
2. I know this is the second book in The Wedding Season series, which features four books by different authors. But there were so many characters introduced at the beginning, it was hard to keep them straight.
3. I didn’t understand the need for the prologue, which happens ten years prior. As I was reading it, I thought the hero would be in it but nope, it was just the heroines and her friends. I guess it meant to introduce the reader to the four friends and give them their history but I didn’t see the need for it unless something significant occurred. Nothing did.
4. Tuck’s dumb southern good ole boy shtick started to get on my nerves by page 37. But then I thought Cassie—the genius—was smart enough to know it was a shtick. It was so over the top at times, I didn’t think it took a rock scientist to grasp it, especially when he says things like this when talking about the hotel they’re staying in and the room numbers:

“There’s a lot of wings in this place and it does get kind of confusin’ after a hundred, don’t it?”  

The biggest reason this book didn’t work for me was because I didn’t buy or believe that someone like Tuck would ever fall for someone like Cassie. After he dropped the southern idiot-savant act, he’s a wonderful guy. I get why Cassie would fall hard for him but him falling for her is still a mystery to me because of the reason I already stated—she’s more a caricature of a nerd than anything else. She acts like she’s too evolved for human emotions like love and desire. When she begins to experience them with Tuck, she acts like this is something that shouldn’t be happening to her. 

But by far my biggest pet peeve about her is her constant use of the words pheromones and libido. If I never see those two words again, it will be too soon.  By about the 20^th use of each word, I couldn’t roll my eyes any harder or faster. I was also very disturbed about her nightly use of sleeping pills and her unwillingness to give them up. I don’t want to see Cassie entering the Betty Ford Clinic in the next book.

As you can see, The Girl Mostly Likely to Marry didn’t work for me. After a few stumbles early on, Tuck ended up working for me but Cassie never did. But if you are or were fans of 3rd Rock From the Sun or Big Bang Theory, you may find Cassie much more engaging than I did because I’m not a fan of either show. The next book in the series is Maid of Dishonor by Heidi Rice, which comes out next month. I love the premise so I definitely want to read it.