Review: Bayside's Most Unexpected Bride by Kerri Carpenter (Saved by the Blog #3)

January 03, 2018

Note: This ARC was provided by the author via Barclay Publicity in exchange for an honest review.

We've come to the end of Kerri Carpenter's small-town romance Saved by the Blog series, and she's saved the best for last. Bayside's Most Unexpected Bride not only gives fans and readers a sweet and fun-filled friends-to-lovers story, but the identity of the infamous Bayside Blogger is finally revealed. There's only one person in the entire town of Bayside, Virginia that knows who the intrepid blogger of Bayside is, and that's none other than thirty-one-year-old Sawyer Wallace, editor-in-chief of the Bayside Bugle, which houses the highly popular gossip column. When he finds himself the target of Bayside Blogger, he immediately calls on twenty-nine-year-old Riley Hudson, one of his oldest and closest friends, and the woman who knows how to rein in the irrepressible blogger. Keeping the blogger's identity secret is vital to both the columnist behind the persona and column's integrity, but when the Bayside Bugle faces a financial crisis, Sawyer may be left with only one option to save the newspaper he loves: reveal the Bayside Blogger's identity. But doing that may very well cost him the woman he's loved for years--Riley.

Who doesn't love a friends-to-lovers romance? Kerri Carpenter gives that but does so with the kind of finesse that I've come to recognize in her writing. This is the kind of series ender that I had hoped for, wrapping things up in this quaint but quirky small town in Virginia and giving us a great couple to root for while allowing us to check in with the first two couples we met and fell for, Cam Dumont and Elle Owens and Jasper Dumont and Clarissa Blackwell, in Falling for the Right Brother and Bidding on the Bachelor, respectively. Sawyer and Riley already have a strong foundation--a lifelong friendship--but that also means crossing the line between friendship and love would be riskier, and that's just one of the essential things that I look for in this trope. The added complication of Sawyer on the brink of losing the Bayside Bugle and how that would affect his employees in general and Riley and the Bayside Blogger in particular definitely made things even more interesting. Bayside's Most Unexpected Bride was one of the books that rounded out 2017, and did so rather wonderfully. I'm giving this great series ender 4.5 stars. ♥

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Read my reviews for the Saved by the Blog series: