3.5 stars
This was an enjoyable frenemies to lovers story that takes place over several months of weddings. The push and pull and angst between the couple did go on a bit too long. But I enjoyed the banter between the couple and was rooting for them The epilogue was really funny. I want to read the next one.

This was a great hate to love romance! The sexual tension between Jase and Emily was off the charts!

I really enjoyed the book, it has everything I love in a novel from start to finish. I can’t wait to read what the author has planned next!

DNF @ 50%

From the blurb, I thought I would love this book, but unfortunately it didn't work for me. There are so many characters introduced right off the bat that I found myself getting confused as to who was who, who was getting married, who hated each other, etc.

The main characters, Emily and Jase, hate each other (for reasons later explained). They share a common set of friends who are pairing off and getting married, so Emily and Jase keep winding up in their friends' wedding parties. This forced proximity normally works for me--as does the enemies-to-lovers trope--but in this book, I didn't understand their initial conflict.

The reason why they've hated each other for so long dates back to a high school misunderstanding, which tells me that if they'd just communicated with each other better, they never would have been enemies at all.

The sex scenes are steamy, but without the emotional context that I needed in order for them to be meaningful, the story fell flat for me.

Miss Bates’s first reading of a Mira Lyn Kelly romance (from the defunct KISS line) left her murmuring “meh, meh, meh”. Her recent Kelly read, May the Best Man Win, The Best Men #1, was a different experience. Miss B’s pre-reading prejudice was wary to say the least, especially in light of that rom-com cover (though she liked the urban background). She side-eyed reading May the Best Man Win for several days before taking the plunge. Once she got into it, however, she knew …

There are several ways you capture Miss B’s reading respect and enjoyment: you make her laugh; you do something tropish-ly clever or twisty; or, you write well, not fancy or original, but smooth, elegant, ease-ful. In this her first of the series, Kelly did all three. Premise-wise, May the Best Man Win is run-of-the-mill. Built around four wise-cracking late-twenties buddies who play best man to a groom-buddy, find love and make their way, bruised and battered (there be reasons) to the altar. The novel uses a clever framing device (Miss Bates LOVES a good frame), opening with hero Jase Foster, staunch bachelorhood in place, playing best man to buddy Dean Skolnic, as only a best man can, by holding a trash can as Dean vomits into it. The other three male friends the series will be built around show up as groomsmen. Jase is caring, but feeling pretty superior as he looks down at nervous-wreck groom. At the end of the novel, with Jase’s own wedding-HEA, we round off with a torn sleeve and cut lip and hint at the next novel’s groom-to-be.

With this opening, Miss Bates’s sly-enjoyment smile grew: Kelly forfeited the trite and overused bridezilla scenario to focus on the nervous-ninny groom. And his groomsmen, Jase included, as they play at their final primary-school antics with their departing, matrimonial-bound bud. There’s humour and nostalgia to their shenanigans, but an equal awareness that marriage and fidelity are the formula that will make their buddy happy. All clever and fun … but not half as much as the entry of Jase’s nemesis, high school not-friend Emily Klein, bride’s maid of honour, and as Jase thinks of her, “Femily Fatale.”

Jase and Emily’s animosity is evident from the first moments of Emily’s introduction. It provides hilarious, sharp dialogue. After a while, the reader realizes the banter-filled antipathy covers a serious, sad, awful back-story the two share:

… he’d finally seen her soft snow job to the cold, hard ice queen beneath. “Jackass,” she greeted, with a soft smile just for him.

“Emily. What can I do for you?”

Isn’t it marvelous? Emily’s staccato insult and Jase’s nasty, cool reply. Miss Bates thought, “I’m going to love this!” But as she already said, the funny hides hurt. Jase has judged and misunderstood Emily since high school’s “bad thing”. Emily, in turn, works hard to live up to Jase’s low opinion.

Jase and Emily’s one-up-man-ship make the novel fun and compelling. They compete for insults, for who cares for their respective bride or groom better, for jibes, ribs, and zingers. Their rivalry is clever and hilariously malicious. After Jase catches Emily sniffing the cologne on his tuxedo jacket, he doesn’t let her live it down. Nevertheless, he knows it’s only a matter of time before Emily gets her own back: “if payback was a bitch, her name was Emily Klein. And as much as he detested her, the woman was not without her wiles.” There’s friction and grudging respect for each other in the playing out of hostilities, evidence one of Miss B’s favourite Jase-Emily wedding-party exchanges:

Those long legs slid in next to his, all but ensuring she’d end up in his space under the table. Great. “You again,” she murmured, then tuning up a smile even he wouldn’t spot as a fraud, she asked, “Shitty day, I hope?”

“Worse every minute,” he assured her, meeting her grin and raising her a friendly shoulder bump that should have had steam shooting from her ears.

But they were on good behavior so she capped it, offering him a smarting pinch on the cheek and a singsong, “That’s what I like to hear.” Yeah, that was his girl.

At this point, Miss Bates figures you’re either going to love this, or hate it. Miss Bates loved it.

How long can Kelly keep this up?, thought Miss B.: this clever, malicious tension has to give way. It does, with Miss B’s favourite Jase-Emily squabble, when they are, once again, paired up at their mutual friends’ wedding as best man and maid of honour, thanks to their respective ginormous heights:

Emily blinked again, peering up into Jase’s face as she gave into the tears completely. “But I hate you.”

“I know, honey.” He pulled her to his chest, closing those powerful arms around her back so all she could do was crumble into him. “I feel the same way.” God, how could he make her feel so much better? How could burrowing her face against his shoulder feel so right? She drew a shaky breath, catching the scent of his cologne as he brushed his fingers through her hair.

Firstly, the contrast between Jase and Emily’s body language and what they say to each other is a hoot! Secondly, the reader is aching with curiosity for the moment they’ll break … because break they do and early. By chapter eight, Kelly has written several mind-blowing hawt love scenes for Emily and Jase. And then, clever, annoying girl, NOTHING. The bedroom door very firmly … closes.

Kelly scores unconventional with brilliant trope reversal. To this point, we have enemies-to-lovers conventional convention and we think we’re moving towards friends-with-benefits … blah blah blah … to love-revelations and HEA. Nope. Kelly moves her enemies-to-explosive-love-scene-lovers to … friends-without-benefits. She agonizingly paces her narrative away from closed bedroom door to no bedroom to intense emotional engagement to doozie-proportion-ed betrayal. May the Best Man Win is clever, heart-moving, and fresh. Miss Bates can’t wait for the next groom, Jase’s best man, stalwart cop Max Brandt, get his matrimonial come-uppance. Kelly has written a romance worthy of Miss Austen’s “there is no charm equal to tenderness of heart,” Emma.

Mira Lyn Kelly’s May the Best Man Win is published by Sourcebooks Casablanca. It was released in August 2016. Miss Bates received an e-ARC from Sourcebooks Casablanca, via Netgalley.