How to Ruin a Wedding
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Author: Elba Luz
Published: 2026
Genre: English
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IBC Editorial Rating: 3.5/5
This book is handpicked by the IBC Editorial Team. If you are an author, publisher, or reader and would like to have a book reviewed by IBC, you may reach us at editorial@indianbookclub.com — we’ll be happy to review it.
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Editorial Review:
Lucy Delgado knows all about things that don't work out. Between two failed marriages and a recently lost job, "meant to be" has started to feel like a cruel joke, one made worse by watching her sister's own marriage quietly fall apart. Desperate for money and thoroughly disillusioned by love, Lucy has turned her cynicism into a career, working as a professional wedding saboteur who slips into ceremonies to talk brides and grooms out of repeating her own mistakes. Then she crashes the wrong wedding. Anders Kennedy needs exactly what Lucy offers: someone to pose as his girlfriend and infiltrate his sister's family circle to derail her upcoming nuptials from the inside. As Lucy and Anders fake-date their way through family gatherings, secrets, and mounting chaos, both are forced to confront the cynicism they have built their lives around, and to wonder whether love might actually be worth believing in after all.
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Book Summary:
Lucy Delgado has built an entire career around her disillusionment with marriage, working as a professional wedding saboteur who uses whatever role necessary an old lover, a nosy relative, a wise stranger- to convince couples not to repeat the mistakes she made in her own two failed marriages. Between that job, a recent layoff, and watching her sister's marriage slowly disintegrate, Lucy has little reason left to believe that "meant to be" means anything at all. Everything shifts when Lucy crashes the wrong ceremony and finds herself face to face with Anders Kennedy, a man whose timing could not be more perfect for his own purposes. Anders needs someone to pose as his new girlfriend, infiltrating his sister's family circle to sabotage her upcoming wedding from within, and he has the financial means to make Lucy an offer she cannot afford to refuse. As the two fake-date their way through family celebrations, mounting complications, and secrets neither anticipated, Lucy and Anders find their carefully constructed cynicism about love beginning to crack. Luz builds their reluctant partnership with genuine warmth and humor, tracing how two people determined to protect others from marriage's pitfalls might just end up questioning everything they believed about their own capacity for love.
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Key Takeaways:
“Cynicism as self-protection after heartbreak”: Lucy's career as a wedding saboteur is built entirely on the belief that love inevitably fails, a worldview shaped directly by her own painful history. Luz treats this cynicism with real empathy, showing how protective armor built from genuine hurt can be both understandable and, eventually, worth questioning. "Self-discovery disguised as sabotage”: Lucy's work infiltrating other people's relationships becomes, unexpectedly, a mirror for her own unresolved feelings about love and self-worth. The novel uses her professional deception as a vehicle for genuine personal growth, letting her question who she actually wants to become. “Family bonds tested by big life changes”: Both Lucy's relationship with her sister and Anders's protective instincts toward his own sibling ground the novel's romance in real family stakes, showing how deeply we can be affected by watching the people we love make choices we fear will hurt them. “Vulnerability beneath the romantic comedy”: Beneath its lighthearted premise, the novel carries real emotional weight, addressing messy, human feelings about failure, self-worth, and the fear of repeating past mistakes. Luz balances humor and heartfelt reflection in a way that gives the romance genuine substance.
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Iconic Lines, Scenes & Characters:
Lucy Delgado. Raw, relatable, and shaped by real heartbreak, Lucy's journey from professional cynic to someone willing to reconsider love gives the novel its emotional core. Her messy, human complexity makes her transformation feel genuinely earned rather than convenient. Anders Kennedy. Pragmatic and driven by his own protective instincts toward his sister, Anders becomes an unexpected catalyst for Lucy's growth, his presence in her life forcing both of them to confront assumptions about love neither had questioned in years. The fake-dating premise. Lucy and Anders's arrangement to infiltrate his sister's wedding circle sets the stage for the novel's central comedic and romantic tension, blending high jinks with genuine emotional stakes as their charade grows increasingly complicated. The sabotage-turned-self-reflection arc. Lucy's attempt to prevent Anders's sister from making a mistake ultimately forces her to examine her own choices and beliefs about marriage, turning what begins as a professional job into a deeply personal reckoning.
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Who Should Read This:
Readers who love rom-coms grounded in genuine emotional depth, rather than pure lightness, will appreciate how thoughtfully Luz balances humor with real vulnerability and self-discovery throughout the story. Anyone drawn to fake-dating tropes complicated by family stakes and mounting chaos will find Lucy and Anders's scheme a genuinely entertaining and heartfelt central hook. Fans of character-driven romance featuring protagonists working through real cynicism and past hurt will connect with Lucy's messy, relatable journey toward reconsidering what she believes about love. A note for readers: the third-act conflict runs a bit longer than some readers may prefer, though it resolves into the satisfying, happy ending the genre promises. Those reading for a guaranteed uplifting conclusion will find exactly that here.
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IBC Editorial Note:
This review is part of the Indian Book Club’s editorial initiative to spotlight books that inspire, inform, and leave a lasting impact on readers. Every title featured is carefully handpicked and reviewed by the IBC Editorial Team to maintain quality, authenticity, and literary value. If you are an author, publisher, or reader and would like to submit a book for review, we’d be delighted to hear from you. Please write to us at: editorial@indianbookclub.com Our team personally evaluates each submission, and selected books are featured as official IBC Editorial Reviews on our platform.
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