Hard Feelings

Cecily Hampton's first date with Dominic Bellinger starts with real conversation and easy chemistry. Then she overhears a phone call and walks out without a word, meaning never to see him again. Mutual friends put them in the same room anyway, at a celebration in Las Vegas, and a night of tequila and bad judgment leaves them married by morning.

Before either can undo it, Cecily's grandmother announces she is dying. Her one request: a road trip through Arizona with the whole family, new husband included. Cecily and Dom board a cramped motor coach alongside her blunt grandmother and unfiltered sister, stuck together for a week with nowhere to go.

Hard Feelings is the second book in Jennifer Millikin's Serendipity & Shenanigans series, a loathe-to-love romantic comedy built on forced proximity. The hostility Cecily and Dom bring onto the bus wears down mile by mile. Odd stops along the route, a haunted hotel among them, keep the tone light even while grief sits underneath the family's plans.

It moves fast and stays funny. The marriage of convenience is only the opening move. Whether two people who married as a joke can choose each other on purpose carries the rest of the book.