Book Review: Three Little Words by Jenny Holiday

Three Little Words

Author: Jenny Holiday
Series: Bridesmaids Behaving Badly, book 3
Publisher: Forever Romance (January 29, 2019)
Mass Market Paperback, 384 pages
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Summary
Gia Gallo is officially in bridesmaid hell. Stranded in New York with her best friend's wedding dress, Gia has six days to make it to Florida in time for the ceremony. And oh-so-charming best man Bennett Buchanan has taken the last available rental car. Looks like she's in for one long road trip with the sexiest - and most irritating - Southern gentleman she's ever met...

Bennett's pretty sure that if there was ever a woman to break his "no flings" rule, Gia would be it. Sure, she's stubborn. She's also funny, smart, and the attraction between them is getting hotter with every state line they cross. While Bennett doesn't do casual, Gia doesn't do "relationships." But if they break the rules, this unlikely pair might discover that their impromptu road trip could turn out to be the best ride of their lives.

Rating: 5 stars

Review
I have been dying to read Bennett's story since the moment Wendy and Noah walked into his restaurant in It Takes Two. I'm pretty sure I finished that book and immediately went hunting for the blurb for the next book in the series (this book!) and let out a very loud whoop of joy when I saw the leading man would, in fact, be the hot chef with the Cajun restaurant and just dripping with Southern charm. YES. All the yes. It was also really wonderful to get to know more about Gia, who I feel like was more of a mystery than the other women in the Fab Four that makes up the group of friends this series centers around (likely because her job causes her to travel all over the world so she's not always there supporting the main character in the first few books except when she can jet in or via video chat. 

I *love* how real and complicated and multidimensional both Gia and Bennett are, and how just totally messed up in completely different ways they are and yet how they just *click*. Feeling like characters are real actual people that I'd want to be friends with, people I'm rooting for and watching struggle and learn and grow, is a major factor in whether or not I connect with a book, and this entire series is just filled with people that I feel like I want to be best friends with. None of them are perfect, and they are all perfect in their imperfections. Gia and Bennett especially are the very embodiment of what it means to love someone not in spite of their flaws, but to love them more because of them. Gia is this amazing problem-solver and she's so wrapped up in the people who only see her for her (admittedly gorgeous) surface that she can't see how *glorious* she is under the surface, and it's like she has problems with her self-worth and then feels bad because she feels like she doesn't deserve to think she has problems, and AHHHHH I want to punch her and hug her at the same time. Gia is struggling with some really major issues with her career, her body, her self-worth, and Bennett is also struggling with his past, his family, his own sense of responsibility and ethics... In some ways they're very much opposites, but in other ways they're so similar, because they're both so determined to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders all on their own. 

Despite dealing with some really serious issues, this book is also so *fun*. As Bennett observes a few times, when Gia is in she is ALL IN, and she's hilarious. Bennett isn't half bad himself, and hijinks definitely ensue. Definitely read this if you like a good contemporary romance with some opposites attract tension along with some stranded together, road trip action as these two try to make it to the church on time!

This is the third (and final) book in the Bridesmaids Behaving Badlyseries. While it can technically be read as a standalone, the relationship between Gia and the three other women who are the leads in the other books (2 full length novels and 2 novellas) are so close knit and interwoven, you really get the most effect if you read the series in order and get to know all the characters. I loved the glimpses into Wendy, Jane, and Elise's Happy Ever Afters I got in this book that I know I wouldn't have appreciated nearly so much if I hadn't read the other books in the series first.