When I finished reading In a Jam by Kate Canterbary in July, I ordered the second book in her Friendship, RI series as quickly as I could. I was so pleased with Canterbary’s style that I knew I wanted more of it. While I four-star loved In a Rush, it paled slightly in comparison. If In a Jam was a 4.5 rounded up, In a Rush is a 4.25 rounded down. Which is not a huge difference, but so much was the same between the two books that I couldn’t help but compare them to one another and while it all still worked a treat for me, Emme and Ryan were just a hair behind Shay and Noah in overall story enjoyment.
In a Rush is another marriage of convenience, friends to lover romance. Emme and Ryan have been best friends since high school where they were literal lifelines for each other during a very tough season of life. Ryan has been in love with Emme since the beginning but took her at her word that she would never date football players and since he needed to keep playing, he made sure to have her friendship if he couldn’t have more. But because there was an unspoken something there, Emme initiates a marriage pact wherein they will marry each other if they are both single at 30. She however forgets (mostly) but he never does and he’s lowkey been waiting for his 30th birthday to arrive to make his move.
And make his move he does.
Here’s where I think that crucial quarter star differential between the two books for me is because while Ryan’s yearning and “I can make this better/easier/less annoying” vibes are exactly what you want in a too wealthy to be real leading character, it was relatively obvious that Ryan had leapt at the opportunity to bring up the marriage pact and offer himself as a revenge husband (a definite upgrade from a revenge date or boyfriend, obviously.) His reasonings given to Emme left gaps that were obviously going to become a miscommunication/lack of communication trope landmine that lingered too long. Also, because it involved familial baggage it bothered me more than it might have otherwise. But Ryan does deliver the best dressing down of a terrible ex that I’ve read in a long while, and that more than made up for the fact that the grovel didn’t work great for me. But I also think the reason that the grovel didn’t strike me as great is that Canterbary does such an excellent job layering in throughout the book that Ryan knows Emme well enough to know that she is going to retreat because she’s going to need processing time and he has to gauge when it’s good to give the space and when he needs to not let her stew. Part of the grovel is him waiting it out because he knows he has to, but it was too close to the end of the book for me to be okay with the pacing of that waiting even if it was well within the established emotional beats of the story.
Bingo Square: Play. There’s an entire subplot about field day that focuses on kids playing that is a hoot, the other football players are AMAZING, and Ryan is prepping to return to training camp and needs to get ready to play while balancing that against his business dealings and wooing his wife.