3 ways It Takes Two will charm romance readers

If One and Only didn’t quite leave you feeling like love was in the air, Jenny Holiday’s followup, It Takes Two, might just be the remedy.

Earlier this week, I mentioned that Ant-Man and the Wasp had pretty much ruined the song “It Takes Two.” That has not changed. However, there are a few other phrases that start with those three words, including “it takes two to tango.” And tangoing is certainly what the protagonists of Jenny Holiday’s second Bridesmaids Behaving Badly novel, It Takes Two, end up doing … just in a verbal form, mostly.

Back when One and Only arrived, yours truly mentioned that Wendy Liu would star in the next novel, and her counterpart is Noah Denning, brother of Jane Denning from the first book. These two, unlike Cameron and Jane, already have a connection — and honestly, their story is a bit more charming that One and Only. Let’s break it down.

There’s no easy forgiveness

Noah, way back in the day, stood Wendy up for the prom. He had a good reason, sure, but that didn’t stop it from seriously affecting Wendy up until the present day. Nor does seeing how well Noah has grown up instantly make Wendy throw her pain aside and jump him.

In fact, Wendy acts pretty much like a human, to put it in the best terms I can. She isn’t always nice to him; she acts awkwardly around him; she’s also definitely into him. There’s something pleasing about all of this, and the two of them actually talk about their issues instead of wiping them away with a few kisses and some declarations of affection.

Admittedly, it does come with somewhat clunky insertion of flashback scenes, although that’s still better than just getting all the rundown from exposition in

Verbal sparring

Both Noah and Wendy are lawyers. While you may think this automatically means they’ll have good repartee, that’s pretty much up to the author’s writing skill. Fortunately, Holiday is up to the task. The two of them go back and forth for pages, and while it would probably be boring for them to just talk through the entire novel, the pages certainly fly by when they have the chance to go around cases, personal things, or just tease each other.

Granted, the fact that Noah calls her “Wendy Liu Who” starts to grate a bit, just because it is so very teenage and they are so very not anymore, but it’s not overused, thankfully.

A little bit of goofiness

While Wendy still lives in Toronto, Noah has moved to New York, and, well, “What happens in New York stays in New York” becomes something the two of them share. Holiday rightfully makes sure to point out how silly this is — not so much to shame her characters so much as to amuse us — and it adds a little old-school touch to a modern-day romance.

Next: 4 ways Providence is perfectly strange

All in all, It Takes Two should please more than just fans of Holiday. Thanks to Forever for sending it my way.