Better at Weddings Than You by Mina V. Esguerra

Better at Weddings Than You

Narrated by Gio Gahol & Rachel Coates

Better at Weddings Than You is book 9 in the Chic Manilla series but can easily be read as a stand-alone.

Daphne Cardenas is a 34-year-old wedding planner based in Manilla. She’s given up on looking for a relationship and is just enjoying her life and growing her business. After so many bad blind dates she has decided not to try anymore. She’s happy enough and when she wants sex, it’s easy enough for her to find a hook-up. No expectations means no time wasted and no hurt. Daphne is confident and competent, and people can find her intimidating as a result but she doesn’t apologise for it. I loved her.

Aaron Trinidad, 33, is also a wedding planner but he’s new to the game, coming from a background in marketing and advertising. After suffering from professional burnout, he stumbled into wedding planning when he was asked by one of his sisters to help organise her wedding. From there, one referral after another has kept him busy. He’s happy doing the job and finds it much less stressful than his previous career.

Aaron has been planning a wedding for his friend Helen, who is marrying Greg. Greg, as it happens, is a kind-of friend of Daphne’s. I say kind-of because Daphne doesn’t really like Greg all that much – not many people do; he’s an asshole. But nonetheless Daphne does think of him as a friend. Exactly why wasn’t entirely clear to me. I gather it was more about their shared history than actual liking.

Greg, convinced that Helen is in love with Aaron, asks Daphne to take over the wedding planning so as to limit Aaron’s time with Helen and thus our two leads are brought into each other’s orbit.

The title suggested to me a rivalry or competition but that’s not what happens at all. Aaron assists Daphne in the handover process and they become friends and then more because both are very attractive and attracted to one another. For Aaron’s part, if Helen is in love with him, it’s completely one-sided. He’s only ever seen her as a friend. (Insofar as there was any suggestion of him “stringing her along” I didn’t really see why that would be but maybe that’s just me.)

The story itself is simple but oh so good! I loved Daphne but what impressed me the most was Aaron. He was a) a guy and b) NOT threatened by Daphne. Not even a little bit. In fact, he was more than happy to learn from her and soak up her knowledge. He freely acknowledged she was better at her job than he was and actively wanted to learn from her. Similarly, when they did begin their physical relationship (oh, by the way – HOT) it is initially more of a FWB thing and he doesn’t get all possessive about Daphne. He is the perfect balance of confident, cheeky, accepting and sexy. Rather than have a jealous outburst after that Daphne spends time talking to another guy, he acknowledges his feelings to himself and then… fails to act on them, instead leaning into the confidence he has earned because she is right there with him at the time – ergo, she’s chosen him and he has nothing to worry about. Rather than letting fear eat him up, he instead uses the opportunity to both enjoy himself and her more but also to continue to show her why he’s her best option. It was a compelling combination. He is in no way a doormat. He’s competent and confident too – it’s just that she knows more, has more contacts in the industry and is far more experienced than he is and he doesn’t take it as a challenge or a treat. More of this please.

Both narrators are Filipino and this lends authenticity to the listen given the story is set in and around the Philippines. I believe Rachel Coates is the more experienced narrator and it shows. Her pacing was very good, as well as her emotion. Ms. Coates read what felt like just a little more than half the book – while the story is in a dual POV, it is not done by way of alternating chapters. Each chapter tells the part of the story it needs to tell and the POV is dependent on that, so sometimes there are multiple chapters in a row from one narrator. In fact, I believe it was chapter four before I heard Gio Gahol’s performance at all.

I didn’t enjoy the narration by Gio Gahol as much. His pacing was off, with too-long pauses between sentences or paragraphs – and sometimes phrases – and inconsistent tone. In some instances he sounded a little like a satnav which leached emotion from his performance. However, I was impressed by his female character voices in particular. They were very believable and not at all a caricature. So, while I did not enjoy his narration as much, there were plenty of things to like. The pacing seems to me to be an easy fix as well (and, I don’t know how much of my experience could have been more about the editing rather than the performance itself).

Better at Weddings Than You is just over 5 hours long, so a fairly short listen but the relationship building is all there nonetheless. It ends on a solid HFN note and I was confident there would be a complete HEA for Daphne and Aaron given a little more time. I was a little curious about what they would do with themselves – would they team up in the wedding planning business or would they continue to each run their own? But I was fully satisfied by the story in my ears.

Kaetrin


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