To Have and to Harley

June 25, 2018
Cole (Indelibly Intimate) brings humor to the gritty biker romance subgenre in this appealing contemporary. Trey Harding’s only family is his motorcycle club. He’s always assumed that his mother was an addict who dumped him when he was an infant. Then he learns that he was kidnapped by a nurse and has a well-off, loving mother who has searched for him his whole life. He’s afraid she wouldn’t love a biker, so he desperately claims to be a wedding planner—and conveniently, his biological sister, Sarah, is about to get married. Enter Sarah’s best friend, Bethany Jernigan, who has already agreed to plan the wedding when Sarah’s long-lost brother suddenly reappears. Despite DNA evidence, Bethany thinks Trey’s out to scam her friend’s family, until she realizes he’s the man of her dreams. A few of the characters could be more developed—especially Bethany’s cruel, deranged grandmother—and a drug dealing subplot is a little jarring, but Cole creates a hero and a heroine to root for, and the scenes with bikers arguing over wedding details are hilarious. This unconventional take on tough guy tropes will melt hearts.

Starred review from July 1, 2018
Using a delightfully hilarious twist on the bad-biker-boy trope, Cole tells the story of Trey Harding, boss of the Iron Shadows biker gang, whose birth mother finds him with the help of a PI. He goes to meet her, and when she asks what he does for a living, despite being covered with tattoos and standing an imposing 6-feet-5, he, in desperation, notices a wedding magazine on the table next to him and replies that he is a wedding planner. So, of course, Trey ends up trapped in his ludicrous lie and planning his newly discovered sister's wedding with the initially reluctant help of the Shadows and despite the skepticism of Bethany Jernigan, his sister's best friend. As he and Bethany fall in love, his secret?to put it mildly?presents problems. Worse still, he also has to tangle with a meth dealer who has invaded the Shadows' territory. Cole orchestrates a reveal, success, and a surprise from Trey's mother, making the most of a unique, cheerfully preposterous, and funny premise in the well-made and thoroughly enjoyable launcher of the Bikers & Brides series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)