Reviewed by Ro

TITLE:  Paper Roses

SERIES:  Confetti Hitched #3

AUTHOR: Lily Morton

PUBLISHER: Self Published

LENGTH: 326 Pages

RELEASE DATE: February 9, 2025

BLURB:

Jed Walker thinks he’s having a midlife crisis. The only trouble is that it feels too good to stop.

Widowed at a young age, he’s spent his life since then avoiding any relationships that might end up hurting him again. He has his successful wedding planning business, Confetti Hitched, and a series of uncomplicated hookups, and that’s all he needs in life

The one person disrupting this controlled stoicism is his younger assistant, Artie. He’s sweet and kind and has a funny way of calming Jed’s mind. So, when Artie comes to him with a problem, Jed moves heaven and earth to help, which is how he finds himself entering a fake marriage with the younger man and catching feelings. Too bad it’s all pretend. Or is it?

REVIEW:

Book 3 of Confetti Hitched series and it’s Artie’s book! Artie is the personal assistant of Jed, the owner of Confetti Hitched. He is quiet, helpful, loyal, and totally in love with Jed. For his part, Jed lost his husband, Mick, ten years ago, inherited Confetti Hitched, and keeps men strictly confined to hookups who need to leave before morning. Jed would do anything for Artie and hey, Jed, why do you think that is?

What Artie needs is a husband. His evil stepmother, Laura, died and put a caveat on her will that he can only inherit the house that belonged to his mother if he is married. So married he will be, he wants his childhood home. Laura’s daughter, Daisy, is Artie’s best friend and roommate, and she comes up with the idea of a fake marriage. Get married, get the house, get a divorce or annulment. So now Artie has to find someone to fake marry, and Jed volunteers. You can see how hard this is going to be for Artie but he wants the house and the memories it carries, and maybe he can go through with this and get Jed out of his system. As if!

They decide to go ahead with it, and it’s lovely and painful and eye-opening. Jed just won’t face up to how he feels about Artie, and Artie is just glomming onto whatever crumbs Jed is willing to give him to hold onto for the future. Jed is very clear and upfront about what is what. “…he carries on, doggedly eviscerating my feelings in the kindest way possible…this thing between us is an arrangement, and just like all of those, it has a start and an expiry date.”  So delusional, our Jed.

Huge added bonus is the “farm fantasy wedding” for a bride at Mal and Caden’s farm. Mal is one of of my favorite characters of Lily Morton’s, and the scene setting up this fiasco of a wedding is hysterical. From Grant wielding shovels of shit, flies on the bride, and Coco Chanel the cow eating wedding cake, I loved it. Totally Confetti Hitched.

The thing that disappointed me in this book and kept it from being five stars was the Mick aspect. Jed was so in love with Mick and has been grieving for ten years. We see this through the other two books in the series and I respected that. Here, however, there is a lot of focus on Mick that changes that some. Not that Jed didn’t love Mick and mourned him, but it changed the perspective. “…he didn’t want me to get bored with him.  He pauses and then says softly, “It took me a long while to realize that he was actually talking about himself getting bored.”

We get to see not just Mal and Caden, but Rafferty, Joe and Stan. Jed’s family, especially his brother, Adam, are funny and wonderful. Mama is no fool, that’s for sure. Despite the fact that Jed is older than Artie, there are times, especially when he’s with Adam, that he seems so much younger. Artie is just an old soul, I think.

This is a sweet ending to the Confetti Hitched series, and the reason for the title is even sweeter.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

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