Four Weekends and A Funeral is a debut adult romance novel by Ellie Palmer, a MN author!
When thirty-year-old post-double-mastectomy BRCA 1 carrier and reluctant thrill-seeker Alison Mullally arrives at her ex-boyfriend Sam’s funeral to find that no one knows he dumped her. She agrees to play the grieving girlfriend for the sake of the family, while also agreeing to helping pack up Sam's apartment with his grumpy best friend, Adam Berg.
Adam is a carpenter who lives in Duluth, working on projects with the eventual dream of opening up a shop in Minneapolis. He feels like his friendship with Sam has been fading, and the least he can do is help with the apartment.
It's only supposed to take four weekends, it should be easy, right? But Adam doesn’t want Alison anywhere near him.
Forced to spend long hours with the grump, and his monosyllabic demeanor, Alison decides she must put her people-pleasing abilities to the test. She will make him like her. And after awkward family affairs and packing up dilemmas, the two form a tenuous friendship, if friendships involve a lot of sexual tension.
Now they are texting, calling and occasionally hanging out outside of packing up Sam's apartment. But when they almost get caught by Sam's mom, they both start to feel guilty about their new feelings, and the loss of their friend.
With a whirlwind of romance, trivia competitions and lots and lots of coffee this book was a super cute story of finding love in tragedy. Both Adam and Alison have a lot of mixed feelings about their feelings for each other but also for themselves. Alison is working on accepting who she is now, with her current risks and the risks she avoided with surgery. Adam feels like he pushed his friend away, and even more guilty for having feelings for his best friend's girl.
One part of this story I really enjoyed was Alison's journey with her diagnosis and surgery, and how she feels like she 'cheated' the system. This leads her to wanting to be the best version of herself, or at least who she things she should be. Throughout the story she's fighting with learning that who she is is enough and how to accept the survivor's guilt she feels. I think it was written very well, and you could tell was very personal to the author.
Adam is my favorite type of grumpy MMC, he sometimes says the wrong thing, knows how to fix things, and shows up when he is needed. I really liked his journey throughout the story as well.
The Minnesota rep in this story was really great too, I love recognizing places in books.
A 4/5 star read of me!
This book comes out August 6, 2024, and its a debut so be sure to check it out!
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