To Have and to Hold

To Have and to Hold is the first book in Lauren Layne's Wedding Belles series, the contemporary romance trilogy set inside a high end Manhattan wedding planning agency. The premise is built for romance. Three women run the firm, each handling weddings for some of the most demanding clients in the city, and each book in the series follows one partner through the inevitable complications of falling for someone they were never supposed to.

In this opening volume, the spotlight is on Brooke Baldwin, the youngest of the three founders. Brooke has just landed the wedding of the season, the high society wedding of socialite Maya Patel, when an unexpected complication walks into her office. Seth Tyler, the wealthy and reclusive brother of the bride, has questions about the wedding planner himself that have nothing to do with the menu or the seating chart. Brooke recognizes him from her own past, a past she has spent years carefully hiding from the polished version of herself she presents to clients, and the slow burn of their unfolding history is what drives the book.

Lauren Layne writes contemporary romance with real craft. Her dialogue snaps, her pacing is reliable, and her chemistry is built through pages of actual conversation rather than just attraction at first sight. The Manhattan setting in the Wedding Belles series gives her room to write the high gloss New York fantasy that romance readers love, while keeping her characters grounded in the kind of real career and class concerns that make the stakes feel earned.

For readers who enjoyed Layne's earlier Stiletto series or her Sex, Love, and Stiletto books, To Have and to Hold continues the brand. For new readers, it is a strong opening to a trilogy that continues with For Better or Worse and To Love and to Cherish.