This was a book that I enjoyed while reading but completely forgot about as soon as I was done.

Maya is a designer for a leading bridal brand, but has to take a leave of absence when her father takes a fall. She returns to her hometown of Charleston, where she picks up work at a bridal boutique with a charming single father owner. Once her father has recovered, will Maya choose to stay in Charleston and branch out with her own designs or head back to New York and climb the ladder of the fashion scene there?

This book just left absolutely zero lasting effect. At no point did I consider DNFing it--it helps, that it was an extremely quick read--and there was nothing really wrong with this book, but it just didn't stick with me. It just kind of existed, and seemed extremely formulaic. It was a bit overly sweet for my taste. I feel bad saying this, but I feel it would have made a better mass market than trade paperback. I have nothing against mass markets, and own and love many, but I just go in with different expectations. Unfortunately, my expectations were too high for this one.

There are some good points, though. I loved the fashion design aspect, it has great representation of black and Asian culture, and features a heroine with a chronic illness and shortened lifespan. It's always great to see this kind of representation in books.

Since there's nothing really bad about this book, I'm torn between 3 and 4 stars, but I gotta go with my gut and overall impression and round down on this one.

Thanks to Avon for my eARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

CW/TW: chronic illness, grief, death of a loved one (off-page), shooting violence (off-page)

3 stars - 6/10

A Lowcountry Bride was absolutely lovely! Maya, a bridal gown designer, heads to South Carolina to spend time with family after a health scare and her whole world is flipped upside down as she finds herself reassessing her priorities and falling in love. This book was so rooted in reality, from a church shooting in SC reminiscent of Emmanuel AME, to health scares, to tough bosses and grieving children. Williams includes it all without overwhelming the beautiful story of trusting oneself, overcoming fears, and falling in love.

I really adored the diversity of experience with all the characters. Maya as Black & AAPI and terminally ill, Derek as a military veteran, widowed father, and small business owner. The characters were unique and dynamic. The only thing I wanted more of was the juicy romance! The experiences of each character were dark and serious, but the love and support each had for each other was so beautiful to read. I definitely hoped for more of the characters falling in love and spending time together than we received, but Williams packed a punch with squeezing quite a bit into this tale.

This romance would have worked better for me if it had not been a romance – not a thing I thought I would ever say.

Wedding gown designer Maya Jackson has been struggling to find a place in a big name designer’s company for a while. She wants to incorporate the west African and Filipino design and stitching techniques she learned from her mother into her gowns, but the white woman who owns the company sees no value in them. Early in the book, Maya’s boss says a big racism, and you know that she will be an antagonist for Maya to overcome. The best and most interesting parts of the book are about Maya as a designer, learning to trust herself.

Unfortunately, the first time we meet her soon to be love interest, Derek, he’s thinking of a customer in his bridal shop as a bridezilla. If I had not felt obligated to keep reading, I would have quit at that slap of misogyny. Maya has a lot to overcome beyond working for a terrible person who undermines her self esteem, but will use her labor. She also lives with a chronic illness, sickle cell anemia, which gives her a shortened life expectancy. And she’s had to take unpaid leave to care for her father, so she’s got big financial worries. Why does she also need a man who thinks of his customers as monsters?

Derek does improve as the book goes on, and his story was the most interesting when he was trying to rebuild his relationship with his daughter. There were two pretty good books in here, but they didn’t quite work together for me.

Content warnings: racism, misogyny, living with chronic illness, off page death of parent from cancer, and off page death of spouse in a racist mass shooting event.

I received this as an advance reader copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I wasn't impressed buy this book at all. The writings was choppy and the interactions between the characters was meh. Way to much inner dialogue of "i can't like this person" clearly it was trying to be a friends to lovers book, but it totally missed the mark for me with the writing.

What I did like, stortyline to save the boutique, how it confronted the Charleston shooting head on, open discussion of a racist designer. It had potential, but the writing style tanked it for me. In the end it was too meh to eveb skim to the end and DNF at 46%

This is a lovely novel that's more than the expected romance and that makes it special. Maya's a wedding dress designer who has been living in New York but she's home to help care for her dad. Derek inherited a bridal shop from his mother and he's been trying his best to keep things going while coping with his grief (and his daughter Jamila's grief) after the murder of his wife. Maya's kept a shield up for years because she's got sickle cell but now she's bending. Williams has blended in terrific local atmospherics as well as diverse cultural influences to create a story that pulled me in and kept me reading. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. A very good read.

Maya is a wedding gown designer who dreams of being the head designer for the company she works for, but when her father’s health requires her to take a leave of absence her dream NYC job to go to Charleston, she worries that dream won’t ever come true. Then she meets Derek, a widowed military veteran who is trying to save his mother’s bridal store. The two create a partnership to help grow their businesses and begin to develop feelings for each other in the process. But between Maya’s sickle-cell anemia and Derek’s daughter still recovering the loss of her mother from a mass shooting at a church, both are stopping themselves from giving love a chance.

The representation in this is what we need more of in romance. I appreciated that the conflict in this story was all based on real issues and not unnecessary drama. This was a very mature relationship and we were able to watch the main characters work through their individual issues in order to open themselves up for love. There were a lot of really tough issues tackled in this book, and it was a little heavier than I anticipated, but I did feel the issues were handled well.

Thank you to Avon Books and NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

summer spreads out before us – a strange, awkward summer where we’re trying to recalibrate what our lives will look like once again, but summer nonetheless – many readers naturally turn to fluffy, easy romances. Stories where the happy endings are guaranteed, heroines can really have it all, and the highest-stakes stress you’ll encounter is the multi-chapter turn where it looks like our favorite couple might not work it out. It’s escapism in its best, purest form.

Preslaysa Williams’s A Lowcountry Bride ticks all these boxes – and then some. A sweet, charming love story thats’ perfect for poolside reading and patio time, this is a romance that’s as simple and easy as a Southern summer day.

There’s an unfortunate lack of depth to some aspects of this story – I would have loved to see Williams really dig into how the tragedy of Derek’s own background (his wife was killed at a mass shooting at a church three years prior to this story) has shaped his character, and despite her clear influence on Maya’s life, her mother’s story is woefully absent throughout A Lowcountry Bride.

Yet Maya is a remarkably easy heroine to root for, with a big heart and tons of determination to succeed. You’ll hope she and Derek manage to work things out not because their love is particularly swoon-worthy, but because Maya is simply a woman who deserves happiness. And though the two don’t have the sort of sexual chemistry that set the page on fire, Derek is such a staunch believer in – and cheerleader for – Maya that it’s obvious why he’s such a great partner/choice for her.

A Lowcountry Bride is a simple love story that’s really about learning to love – and trust- yourself as much as your romantic partner. Sweet, easy, and not too taxing, it’s a summer story you’ll fully enjoy while it’s happening, even if it won’t exactly linger on your year-end best-of lists afterward.

Thank you NetGalley, Avon, Harper Voyager and Preslaysa Williams for gifting me an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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What’s better than reading a wedding themed romance in the height of summer wedding season?! I loved the cover and blurb for this one so I was excited to read it. While I won’t say that I loved this one, I do think it’s worth the read! The pace moved a little slow for me and I failed to connect with the romance aspect. There were quite a few heavy topics in what I perceived as a romance. There’s nothing worse than going into a romance expecting light and funny and getting something a lot heavier than that. It’s always a reading buzz kill for me. Maybe if I had gone into this one expecting what I got, then I could’ve been in a mood better suited for this. Alas, I didn’t, so I wasn’t.

If you're looking for a low-angst, low-conflict book with two mature, well-developed characters, then grab this book! There are so many things to love. For one, it was so refreshing to read a romance with two mature, independent, emotionally intelligent adults who had each of their own goals and values figured out. I loved Maya's ambition as well as Derek's devotion to his daughter, and I loved that during the tough moments of the moment, they came together and talked through things in a respectful, supportive manner. This is gold standard for a really healthy, emotionally mature relationship, and I deeply respected and appreciated seeing that in this book. Both characters were very well developed, and I really enjoyed rooting for both of them to get their HEA! I also enjoyed how Williams weaved in threads of her own cultural history (pun intended!) into this book. It was a really lovely read, but I sometimes found that sometimes, each of the characters lacked a distinct voice; in dialogue and on page, Derek and Maya's POV sometimes sounded very similar. There was some passages that were a tiny bit awkward. This is obviously a very personal preference, but the writing at times was a bit stiff and formal, and it slowed down my reading a bit. However, this rarely detracted from a lovely, sweet story. I think Williams sets a really great example of a "low heat" romance that shows two characters' character growth alongside each other while they develop a solid, beautiful relationship with each other. I'm really thankful the author sent me an ARC! (less)

If you're looking for a sweet romance with depth, then A Lowcountry Bride is the perfect choice. The book melds together a heartwarming relationship between the two main characters with deeper issues such as dealing with a chronic illness, honoring cultural background, and staying true to yourself.

At first, I found Maya a bit abrasive and closed off. Yet once I understood her background and how she needed to protect herself due to her illness, I gained more insight into her actions and reactions. The parts about Derek's legacy with his bridal boutique brought tears to my eyes and made me think about how our heritage and the sacrifices of our ancestors helped to create and influences the lives we live today.

While I understood on a surface level Maya's desire and goal to accomplish her dream of being head designer, I couldn't really identify with why she would sacrifice everything--her health, love, a chance to have her own label--for the sake of that goal. Well, not until she revealed to her father that she believed it was her late mother's dream for her. Then it made a bit more sense, but in the narrative it might have been better to reveal that earlier so the reader has more buy in rather than being frustrated with her choices.

Overall I was impressed with this novel and the unique voice Preslaysa Williams brings to the table with her own Black and Asian background forming a framework for the tale. I look forward to reading more from her in the future! If you like romance, particularly romance written from an OwnVoices writer, then definitely put this on your reading list.

This was a sweet but slow romance. Maya and Derek are both complex and likeable characters going through the high and lows in life. Maya suffering from her own personal battles and Derek recovering from a tragic event takes the reader on an emotional ride. Readers who are focusing on the process love and healing with definitely be able to relate to sweet, emotional, cordial romance novel.

I wanted to love this book, but from the very first chapter, the awkward writing and predictable narrative pathways made it difficult to continue. Dialogue and prose are both stiff and stilted, and exposition is extremely heavy-handed. Laura, Maya's boss, is so cringe-inducingly racist as to feel like a caricature. The obviousness of Maya's need to leave the company and escape Laura's white supremacist-inspired rule negates the professional journey Maya will go on in South Carolina. Other aspects of the novel are similarly overt, giving the whole book a predictable, "Hallmark movie" feel.

The romance is secondary to the many iterations of trauma in the plot (parental death, chronic illness, mass shooting, and spousal death, to name just a few), and both Maya and Derek continually make bad decisions that lead to empty drama (i.e., problems that could be solved with a single, rational conversation). When the secondary cast shines brighter than our romantic leads, you know the narrative has wandered astray.

While there are important representations in this book -- including Maya's Afro-Filipina heritage, romance despite chronic illness, and the presence of two Black romantic leads -- the story doesn't have an HEA (maybe HFN?? But we know there's a ticking clock on Maya's mortality). It would have been more accurately tagged as women's fiction.

Ultimately, we have a disconnect between what this book aspires to be and what it is -- and the result is less than compelling.

this was not the book for me. I could not deal with a book that so much about a woman who starts out talking about she feels that she is dealing with a disease that is a death sentence and a man who was dealing with so much grief over losing his wife in a mass murder shooting. I had no idea how dark the tone was going to be and I wish the publishers would convey this better.

Such a sweet, loving book that was able timintertwin current issues (i.e. gentrification, mass shootings, trauma, biracial,identity) into a loving and romantic story. Having Charleston as the backdrop to this story was so well thought out by the author and i cried at so many parts. I felt for both Maya and Derek and they navigated their own issues and found love and peach with each other. All in all, this was a great book.

This review is posted to Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3992344732 It will be posted to Instagram on Saturday, May 29, 2021 and Amazon on publication day.

This romance is some Hallmark realness. If you’re looking for a sweet romance that you could read with your mom without worry, then look no further. It’s a cute story about finding love after heartbreak and following your dreams. The plot wraps up oh-so-nicely for our protagonists (maybe a little too nicely, but do we really want our romance to end any other way?).

There were bits of the writing that did come off as a bit jumbled or awkward, so I will admit that it’s perhaps not my favorite writing style. But I rooted for Maya right from the beginning, both for her professional aspirations and her personal relationships. She’s a great character and her relationship with her dad was so lovely to read. I was a little more interested in her father’s relationship with his new lady friend Ginger. I feel like they kind of stole the show in some ways. Derek was maybe a little flat, but as far as male protagonists go, he fits the bill for former Navy captain dreamboat.

4 / 5 Stars
0 / 5 Steam (kissing only)

Content Warnings:
Parental loss, grief, terminal illness, and mass shootings. Please be advised that this book does reference a mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston. Many of the characters are recovering from the loss of that event, and though the shooting is not discussed at length, some readers may struggle to read about it even tangentially.


This review will be published in the print publication Appleton Monthly Magazine in Appleton, WI in the June 2021 issue under the Great Reads section. It will also be posted to the magazine’s website at https://appletonmonthlymag.com/great-reads/ following publication.

This sweet romance set in Charleston, South Carolina is a perfect read for summer. As a Black-Filipina, Maya is working hard to make a name for herself at a bridal fashion design house in New York, but her boss doesn't see the beauty in Maya's original designs. But when her father has an unexpected fall back home in Charleston, Maya rushes home to help him. There she meets Derek Sullivan, a retired Navy captain with struggles of his own. After the passing of his mother last year, Derek is struggling to keep his mother’s former business afloat. The bridal boutique was everything to his mother, and he will do everything he can to keep the business alive to one day pass on to his own daughter. However, he is still reeling from the tragic death of his wife and Derek is struggling to raise his teenage daughter Jamila. Maya and Derek work together to make their dreams, and love, blossom in historic Charleston.

A Lowcountry Bride is more than a super sweet romance—it’s got a bit more grit to it. Ms. Williams does not gloss over racism, loss, grief, or chronic illness. Maya has sickle cell anemia and her struggle with the physical aspects as well as the mental aspects that come with it aren’t glossed over. That being said, at the heart of the story are still themes of hope and love. These things combined with the easy style of writing of the author make this a must read for contemporary women’s fiction fans, too. I really enjoyed the story and hope to revisit this author in the future!

Thank you for the early copy of this book to review - as someone who lived in South Carolina for a few years, I was so ready to explore the streets of Charleston through this work!

Overall, I enjoyed this sweet book. I was rooting for both the hero and heroine, enjoyed the other cast of characters, and loved the bridal/wedding centric setting. I loved Maya's dedication to her work - and her creativity and passion for bringing something new to the bridal scene. I felt the romance was sweet, realistic, and built gradually. Additionally, there is both biracial (Black and Asian) and chronic illness representation, and the book also touches on Charleston's history as it relates to the slave trade.

The only piece I thought odd was Maya's determination to bond with the daughter in the beginning of the book, prior to any romance or relationship. If she was bent on only being home for a few months, why was she focusing so much energy there?

An immersive experience into the life of a designer trying to find herself in South Carolina Lowcountry. This story was a great Avon debut for Preslaysa Williams.

Maya has always dreamed of making her mark as a bridal designer, and she’s trying to get there by becoming Head Designer for Laura Whitcomb, Inc. Her father breaks his hip, so Maya has to return to Charleston, South Carolina for a few months to help him out. For the first time in a long time, her career has to take the back seat. In order to earn some money while she’s in Charleston, she ends up finding an opportunity at a local bridal gown boutique, where she meets Derek. He’s just trying to keep Always a Bride open to preserve his mother’s legacy and improve his complicated relationship with his daughter. There are instant sparks between Maya and Derek, but they aren’t sure if they want to give love a chance.

This book gives me really mixed feelings, so I definitely struggled a bit with rating it. On the one hand, I really felt immersed in the day-to-day struggles that Maya was going through, between her job complications and her chronic illness. Can you get contact stressed out? Because I feel like I did while reading about what Maya was dealing with. Despite being able to put myself in her shoes, I did feel like she was making bad choices a lot of the time, which was very frustrating. On the other hand, Derek felt very flat for most of the book. He was basically just upset about losing his wife (completely understandable) and frustrated with his challenges connecting with his daughter Jamila (again, completely understandable). He talked (or thought) a lot about changing his life and wanting to do more, but it seemed like he was very passive. He wasn’t really trying to make things happen; they just happened to him. Feeling the connection between Maya and Derek was difficult, perhaps because of the choices they were making as individuals.

The secondary characters I think are what really makes this story successful. Maya’s dad is there as a great sounding board and counselor, Ginger cares deeply about everyone around her, and the neighborhood and church really seem to be rooting for Derek and Always a Bride to succeed. Jamila is also interesting and you definitely get to experience a lot of her teenage angst. I think seeing more complicated conversations between her and Derek would have really strengthened the book and made me feel more connected to them both. Charleston also featured very prominently in the story, which was amazing. We got to see more about the history of the city than just the major tourist attractions and it felt very authentic. Finally, learning about the Afro-Filipino techniques Maya included in her designs was amazing. I feel like I learned so much and am definitely curious to explore that topic more!

Overall, if you like sweet romances with a strong family dynamic, this story could be for you. There were definitely some tough topics covered (check out the trigger warnings so you’re prepared going in, unlike I was based on the short blurb from the publisher), but it’s still a mostly upbeat story about new beginnings.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.

A Lowcountry Bride promises sweet small-town vibes, but with a bit more racial diversity. And overall, this is a sweet read with characters I connected with.

Maya is mixed: Black/Filipino, like Preslaysa Williams herself, and I liked seeing elements of her two cultures come through in both subtle and distinct ways, such as in the style of stitching she learned from her mother. She has been working for the white designer, Laura Whitcomb for years, and has dreams of being the lead designer, although Laura makes the environment incredibly racially hostile for Maya. I also liked how her chronic illness was written as a motivator for her to continue to seek professional fulfillment, although she is prepared to put that on hold when her father needs her.

Meanwhile, Derek is dealing with a lot of grief at the loss of his wife in a church shooting, and he’s trying to raise his daughter alone while also trying to manage his late mother’s bridal shop. I appreciated the sentiments from his perspective about what the shop meant to people in the wider context of Black history, which further demonstrated its importance beyond the already obvious personal connection.

Williams tackles a lot of issues in the book, and at times it does seem a bit overwhelming, especially as sometimes it does feel like some elements were neglected in favor of others which were more fleshed out. There is the question of whether this might have been made more concise by narrowing the focus to a single issue for each of the leads, but I can see how they’re all intertwined and impact each other.

Preslaysa Williams delivers a sweet read that doesn’t shy away from important issues impacting her characters, such as racism, chronic illness, and grief. yet handling them with a gentle touch, aware of the suffering the characters and the real people who share those experiences have faced. In spite of the issues, I enjoyed reading it, and am excited for more from this author. If you love small-town, low-heat romance, I’d recommend giving this book a try.

A Lowcountry Bride is a sweet story of Maya, a wedding dress designer, who comes home to take care of her dad after hip surgery. A difficult job situation and financial worries lead her to a job helping Derek at his family's wedding dress shop. As they work to make the shop financially secure, they find each other and love. It's a sweet and fun story that moves fast and shows a great story of personal growth. I think my friends who like Annie Rains will also like this story.